SP518 Status

Since I'm still Wading in Opening Theory, I thought it would be appropriate to give a status report on how deep that theory is in practice. To be clear, I'm talking about correspondence games using the traditional start position (SP518 RNBQKBNR).

The seven games that started two weeks ago have all advanced to around moves 8-12. All of them are still in theory, meaning that I can find games on Chesslab.com with the same position I'm playing. Of the seven games, three are still in basic theory, where hundreds of games have already been played to the position in my game. In one of those three games, my opponent is taking a 'long think' to decide between two theoretical moves of equal importance that branch into completely different paths.

Of the other four games, three are in positions where I find 10-20 previously played games. In all three of those games, one variation has been played more than any other, and the effort required on my part is to understand why that variation is so popular and where it will eventually lead. Previous experience tells me that all of those games will eventually reach a position where several different moves have been tried, each move having a handful (less than five) of representative games. That's the point where I have to start thinking for myself.

The last of the seven games has already reached the 'handful' stage. That, of course, is where the chess starts to become interesting because I'm really on my own.

In contrast to those seven SP518 games, I just started two chess960 correspondence games, one with White and one with Black. Both games are on the first move and I'm already on my own. I know from experience that the CCRL database (see the link in the right sidebar) is unreliable for opening ideas, since engines just don't understand the opening. I also know that I won't find more than a few dozen games elsewhere using the same start position, many of those between players who have a different idea about opening objectives than I have.

I know that preparing for correspondence chess is not the same as preparing for crossboard chess. In fact, preparing openings for crossboard chess is even more time consuming and the work is never finished. In a world where time is a limited quantity for all of us, that pretty much sums up why I prefer playing chess960.

Chess960 Strategy

Since I'm still Wading in Opening Theory, desperately short of time, I took the lead from that post and decided to follow one of Google's search suggestions. The first suggestion, 'chess960 castling', is undoubtedly top-of-the-list because it's essential knowledge and looks mysterious for all chess960 newcomers who are already familiar with traditional chess. Once they've played a few games and have castled a few times, the mystery transmigrates into the second suggestion, 'chess960 strategy'.

Unfortunately, chess960 strategy is a topic too big for a post where the primary objective is to get it finished as quickly as possible. After looking at several pages of search results for 'chess960 strategy', the most I can offer is a summary. The phrase is subject to at least four different interpretations.

• Not too surprisingly, 'chess960 strategy' is often understood to mean the same as 'chess960 opening strategy'. This is partly because the main difference between traditional chess and chess960 is in the opening phase, and partly because 'opening strategy' is also a mystery for novice players of traditional chess. Here we find lists of well known opening objectives like piece development, attention to the center, and so on.
  
  
• After lists of the components of opening strategy, the next step is to treat each component as a separate topic. What does 'piece development' mean when the pieces start on different squares? How does 'attention to the center' apply to specific start positions? And so on.
  
  
• After considering 'chess960 strategy' applied only to the opening, the concept blossoms into principles that are valid into the middlegame and endgame. These can be extensions of the lists of opening objectives -- because they also apply throughout the game -- supplemented by lists of generic strategies that spring into action after the pieces have been developed. One example would be attacks against the castled King. Another would be maneuvers around a blocked center. And so on.
  
  
• After lists of typical, generic strategies, the next step is to examine specific strategies using concrete examples. Here we find detailed examples from real games showing 'attacks against the castled King' or 'maneuvers around a blocked center', and so on.

It looks like I've stumbled into the wrong topic for someone who is desperately short of time. It also looks like I have several ideas for future posts. Before I tackle those, I have to return to traditional chess and wade through more opening theory.

Wading in Opening Theory

Every once in a while I get overwhelmed when a new SP518 online tournament starts and I have little time for blogging. Two years ago I mentioned this for a post titled The Clock Is/Isn't Ticking, and now, for similar reasons, I plead Cup Play.

What to do? How about a quick post on the terms Google suggests for a chess960 search. I found a good explanation of the mechanism at How Google Instant’s Autocomplete Suggestions Work, written by Danny Sullivan, aka Dr. Search Engine. Here are the terms suggested when you start typing 'chess960':-

• chess960 castling
• chess960 strategy
• chess960 openings
• chess960 chess.com
• chess960 tips
• chess960 computer
• chess960 play online
• chess960 tournament
• chess960 games
• chess960 software

Ditto for 'fischer random':-

• fischer random chess
• fischer random chess online
• fischer random generator
• fischer random chess castling
• fischer random chess960
• fischer random castling

The term 'fischerrandom' (two 'r's) automatically corrects to 'fischer random', while 'fischerandom' (one 'r') returns only three suggestions:-

• fischerandom chess
• fischerandom chess computerized shuffler
• fischerandom wiki

There are some interesting terms in these lists and I might come back to them for my next post if I'm still wading in opening theory.

A Difficult SP for Black

Continuing with Proof of Concept with HarryO, after we analyzed the two start positions (SPs) discussed in Problem with the SP or with the Engines?, we moved on to another problem SP discovered in Waving a Yellow Flag. The moves and comments for this position -- SP868 QBBRKRNN -- can be found in HarryO's blog post Non-Random Chess 960 Trial Game 8: SP868.

The position after White's first move is shown in the top diagram. White threatens 2.Nf5, attacking g7 with the not-so-trivial threat of a smothered mate. I was playing Black and quickly determined that I didn't have many options. I finally decided to give up the possibility of castling O-O, and played 1...Nf6 2.Nf5 Rg8. The game continued 3.b3 Ng6 4.Nf3, reaching the position shown in the second diagram.

Now I played 4...Nf4, with an attack on e2 which seemed to prevent White from castling O-O. White played 5.O-O! anyway, after which I realized that the e-Pawn is poison because of Black's subsequent weakness on the e-file. The game continued 5...d6 6.Ng3 b5 7.c4 bxc4, when I discovered that White almost has a forced win. I requested to take the game back to White's fourth move and, in the spirit of discovering the truth about the initial SP, HarryO agreed.

My second attempt from the diagrammed position (instead of 4...Nf4) was 4...c5. The game continued 5.d4 b6 6.c4 Nf4, with the same idea as the first variation, but in a different setting. This time the move 7.O-O was not as powerful. After 7...Nxe2+ 8.Kh1 d5, White tried 9.Ba3. This led to a series of exchanges which took the pressure off Black. After move 15, we agreed that Black was out of danger and decided to start a new game with the corner Queen and Bishop swapped. That next game is being played at Non-Random Chess960 Trial Game 9: SP864.

Around the same time that the SP868 game started, I was working on a series of posts for my main blog with the theme of 'engine evaluation'. On one of those posts -- One Imbalance Leads to Another -- I learned that the value of castling is approximately equal to a Pawn. This meant that when I gave up castling O-O by playing 1...Nf6, I was making the equivalent of a Pawn sacrifice. I looked again at the position after 1.Ng3, and discovered that the alternative 1...g6 can also lead to a Pawn sacrifice, where Black has considerable compensation for the Pawn. If this is true, then Black has two methods of meeting the difficult challenge posed by 1.Ng3.

Games Between Skillful Players

The last time I looked at the LSS game collection (see the link to LSS in the sidebar) was in my post on Really Short Games, where I gave an example of a chess960 opening blunder ('??'). There are many more examples and while it might be useful to catalog the patterns involved, this is not the most interesting aspect of chess960.

Continuing with my copy of the LSS database, I identified games between players rated 2000 or more. Of the 7308 games on file, a little more than 100 games met this criteria. The reason is that until a year ago, LSS offered only one type of chess960 event, where players of all strengths are placed into the next event -- first come, first served -- until the available places are filled. Then the next event is opened. This often leads to rating mismatches with differences of 1000 points or more. The site now offers annual 'LSS Chess960 Championships', but the 2012 edition has only completed the preliminary stage, where there was just a single pairing of 2000+ players. We should see more games between top players as the semifinal and final stages complete.

All of the LSS events use the parallel game format, where opponents play two games using the same start position, one with White and one with Black. I've discussed this format in several posts, where the most recent was Opening Logic Sets the Course.

For this current post I chose a game played last year in an event named FO-2012-0-00316. One player was rated 2335, the other 2175, and they were assigned SP456 RBNNBKQR as the start position. The following diagram shows the position after five moves in both games.

In the top diagram, the initial moves were 1.f3 f6 2.Qf2 a6 3.c3 Ba7 4.d4 Nc6 5.Nd3 h5.

In the bottom diagram, the moves were 1.f4 Nd6 2.c3 f5 3.Qe3 Qe6 4.Qh3 O-O 5.Ne3 a5.

Both games show a curious symmetry of the f-Pawn. In the first game, f2-f3 and ...f7-f6 were played. In the second game, f2-f4 and ...f7-f5 were played. Can you tell from looking at the diagrams which player was higher rated?

'I wish there were more opportunities to play'

American GM Hikaru Nakamura has figured in many posts on this blog, for example CCM9: Nakamura, Grischuk, and Rybka (for more, see 'Search This Blog' in the navigation bar on the right). I was pleased to see a comment in the April 2013 Chess Life (CL): Cover Story; 'The Resolute Grandmaster: Hikaru Nakamura’s slow progress towards the top' by Macauley Peterson (p.24).

Highlights from Nakamura at the London Chess Classic: In general, I try to surprise my opponents much more, as opposed to having a set repertoire of one or two openings. The more weapons you have -- the more chances to surprise your opponents and reach positions that you're more familiar with -- the better off you are. That's why, I would say, Carlsen has such great results. He's very good in pretty much every structure that's out there. He knows the concepts and the piece play a lot better than some of the other players.

With the computers now, you can't just be successful with one opening. You look at players like Karpov or Kasparov. Karpov for almost his whole career played the Caro-Kann, and some Frenches as well, and he did great. And with Garry, he played the Scheveningen and then the Najdorf for the better part of 20 years, whereas nowadays you really have to know more than that because with the computer you can analyze any opening and probably within one day you can have a very good understanding of it. So, because of that it's really changed the whole landscape of chess.

I really like Chess960 [also known as Fischer Random chess - MP]. I think it is the future of chess. For now classical chess is still very much alive, but at some point I think ... most people will be playing [960] ... The pieces are more random but still the skill factor is there, and I really enjoy it because it's really playing pure chess, there isn't the same preparation the way there is now ... I wish there were more opportunities to play it.

The same issue of CL (p.10) had 'Benko Remembers Fischer : Three compositions in honor of Fischer’s 70th birthday (born March 9, 1943)'. Two of the compositions used chess960 castling rules.

Random Position, Random Results?

On my main blog I've been running a series on the three 'Black Is OK' books by GM Andras Adorjan. I wrote the most recent post, 'Black Is OK' - 12 Discussion Points, with chess960 in mind. Here are the first three of the 12 discussion points, adapted for chess960.

1. I presume -- in the spirit of the presumption of innocence -- that [all 960 start positions are] equal.
2. The logical outcome of [any start position] is a draw.
3. If one of the players wins [a] game, his opponent has certainly made some mistake.

Not as convincing as the same statements for traditional chess (SP518 RNBQKBNR), are they? To be clear, saying that 'all 960 start positions are equal', doesn't mean equal to each other; it means equal for White and Black, i.e. neither color starts with a winning advantage in any start position (SP). At this point in my chess960 education, I presume this is true, but I am far from convinced and wouldn't be surprised if this presumption turned out to be false. In the ongoing series of games I presented in Proof of Concept with HarryO, my sparring partner admitted that he doesn't have the same confidence that I do. He is certainly not alone.

Getting back to traditional chess, the foundation of the 'Black Is OK' philosophy rests entirely on the second point. To quote the original statement in full:

Qualified players will mostly come up with the same reply as a great number of world champions or chess thinkers since Lasker: the logical outcome of the game is a draw.

If the 'qualified players' are right, as the accumulated experience suggests, then Black is OK; if they are not right, then there is a tree of related variations where all branches inevitably lead to a forced win for White, and Black is definitely *not* OK (ignoring the minute possibility that traditional chess is a forced win for Black, which is highly unlikely).

Since there aren't really any qualified players in chess960, and since the accumulated experience is skimpy at best, we just don't know if 'Black Is OK' across all SPs. All we have is our presumption of innocence, which is an act of faith. That brings me to the third point: a game is only lost because of a mistake. In chess960 it might indeed be lost because of a flaw in the start position. We will never know for sure, will we?

In his 'presumption of innocence' essay (see the '12 Discussion Points' post for a link), Adorjan touched on one metric that might be relevant. He mentioned that the ratio of White wins to Black wins in practice 'could be something like 55:45 in 100 games'. This corresponds to an observation I made in A Pawn Equals 200 Rating Points.

A difference of 40 rating points [value of first move as a fraction of a Pawn] gives the higher rated player a little less than a 0.56 chance of winning the game. This means a 56% expected score for White, and a 44% expected score for Black, which is close to the result derived from databases of historical master-level games.

Is this ratio related to the specific start position in SP518 or is it a function of the first move? Perhaps it is both. I'm afraid that, once again, we will never know for sure, will we!