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Subject: Re: Shuffle Chess&Hiarcs 6.0

Author: Don Dailey

Date: 15:05:25 01/08/98

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On January 08, 1998 at 17:19:57, William Dozier wrote:

>Good Day everyone: To whome it all may concern/ What is the purpose
>behind shuffle chess and how is it played?  why arent maney chess
>players playing it? Is it important for a chess program to have shuffle
>chess? Does it enhance the chess program in any way? and if not, why put
>it into a chess program?
>
>Ps. I like to ask questions./ Some postive feedback please, thank you.


I don't know shuffle chess but I know the basic idea.  There is a
Fischer version where you randomize the back rank but there are
some constraints you must follow like bishops on opposite colors
etc.  I really don't know the exact rules and hope someone posts
both sets of rules.  I think there is a version where players
alternately place their own back rank, I'm not 100% sure.

I think most programs make a lot of positional assumptions that would
break from these unatural starting positions.   I try to avoid making
these assumptions myself but I'm sure my evaluation one way or the other
depends on them.

I think a lot could be learned from this kind of chess.  I'll bet
we would quickly discover new heuristics that would be valid with
regular chess and force us to look at things differently.  I think
it would cause us to rethink simple minded rules and think of better
conditions for applying them.

But it is a different game.  Most of us love chess a lot and are
reluctant to change the rules, effectively producing a new game.

I'm guessing computers would do much better at this new kind of
chess but I could be wrong here.  We have stored patterns and ideas
that benefit us throughout the opening and into the middlegame and
often into the endgame.  Good players often know the types of endgames
they are likely to get from the openings they play.  But computers
tend to figure it out as they go.

- Don










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