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[blueblimp]

I'm not convinced that Duelling is the right mechanism for the, but it seems reasonable to me that it could be.

I'm convinced it's not. Half the point of chess is that it's a deterministic perfect information game. Simultaneous play is a form of randomness, because the optimal strategy is often a randomized one. Either Sirlin doesn't understand this, or he deliberately didn't want a game that felt like chess. Either way, I'm not impressed.

[ipofanes]

For that matter, I've never understood why drawing is such a problem for people.

The ability to force a stalemate is one of the most interesting aspects to chess. 

A forced stalemate is the 2nd rarest draw condition I think, second only to an enforcement of the 50 moves rule.

Chess got a bad reputation not over stalemate draws but over offered and accepted draws following a canned sequence of 16 opening moves.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

For that matter, I've never understood why drawing is such a problem for people.

The ability to force a stalemate is one of the most interesting aspects to chess. 

A forced stalemate is the 2nd rarest draw condition I think, second only to an enforcement of the 50 moves rule.

Chess got a bad reputation not over stalemate draws but over offered and accepted draws following a canned sequence of 16 opening moves.

That's only in master-level play though.  And stalemates are less common because games don't often get played out all the way into the endgame.  Forcing endgame stalemates can be a very important skill, and like many things, the threat of this also has a big impact on the game.

I agree the GM-draw offers are stupid, but that's a matter of tournaments not disincentivizing it enough.

[liopoil]

Not sure if we're talking about the same stalemate, but stalemate very rarely occurs unless the winning side makes a serious blunder. I would think the most common draws are when you get to an endgame where neither side can make progress.

[XerxesPraelor]

I really don't understand the whole emphasis on prediction. There are plenty of other valid and possibly less luck based mechanics to base a game around. Chess is perfectly fine the way it is, you don't need to add all sorts of complications just to make people start their work at figuring out the strategy all over again. It's a bad excuse to change the rules of a game because you're bad at it.

[ipofanes]

I really don't understand the whole emphasis on prediction. There are plenty of other valid and possibly less luck based mechanics to base a game around. Chess is perfectly fine the way it is, you don't need to add all sorts of complications just to make people start their work at figuring out the strategy all over again. It's a bad excuse to change the rules of a game because you're bad at it.

It was Bobby Fischer who said something along the lines of "Chess is not that complicated a game after all. All problems are solved." Later, he touted Chess960. I guess he had the excuse being Bobby Fischer.

[Kirian]

I really don't understand the whole emphasis on prediction. There are plenty of other valid and possibly less luck based mechanics to base a game around. Chess is perfectly fine the way it is, you don't need to add all sorts of complications just to make people start their work at figuring out the strategy all over again. It's a bad excuse to change the rules of a game because you're bad at it.

It was Bobby Fischer who said something along the lines of "Chess is not that complicated a game after all. All problems are solved." Later, he touted Chess960. I guess he had the excuse being Bobby Fischer.

Yeah, I think if you prove you're truly good at the game, you're allowed to be bored by it.

[dondon151]

Dominion is not that complicated a game after all. It just depends on the kingdom.

[XerxesPraelor]

Chess is way more complicated than dominion, given a specific kingdom. But the evaluation of the kingdom is everything in dominion, so it's not really a fair comparison.

[AJD]

So clearly we need Dominion Chess: every game uses pawns, kings, and queens as usual, but then you add three randomly chosen kingdom pieces to fill out the back rank.

[eHalcyon]

So clearly we need Dominion Chess: every game uses pawns, kings, and queens as usual, but then you add three randomly chosen kingdom pieces to fill out the back rank.

Not quite what you said, but Dominion Chess already exists.

[popsofctown]

I'm not convinced that Duelling is the right mechanism for the, but it seems reasonable to me that it could be.

Either Sirlin doesn't understand this, or he deliberately didn't want a game that felt like chess.

I assure you it's the former

[ipofanes]

I really don't understand the whole emphasis on prediction. There are plenty of other valid and possibly less luck based mechanics to base a game around. Chess is perfectly fine the way it is, you don't need to add all sorts of complications just to make people start their work at figuring out the strategy all over again. It's a bad excuse to change the rules of a game because you're bad at it.

It was Bobby Fischer who said something along the lines of "Chess is not that complicated a game after all. All problems are solved." Later, he touted Chess960. I guess he had the excuse being Bobby Fischer.

Yeah, I think if you prove you're truly good at the game, you're allowed to be bored by it.

But the thing is, even at a quite low level a great part of getting better is memorising. Some people hate that, and Chess960 remedies that.

I think you can criticise a game, or even make attempts to "fix" it, even if you don't grok it to its full extent.

Disclaimer: Haven't played Chess960 as I am below the level where memorising gets in the way of fun.

[WanderingWinder]

It's just so patronizing for Sirlin to list these 'problems' of chess and try to fix them:

Wait, what problems? It's the most popular and successful game of all time, and actually still the most popular and successful game in the world today - right? Okay, it's not universally loved, but this is not a fault of the game, I don't think. I suppose you can say that it isn't a perfect game, but it would take an enormous amount of hubris to think that you had created a perfect game...

Insisting that opening memorization is only a problem at the highest levels of play leaves me a choice between feeling flattered or feeling skeptical, and I'm going to go with skeptical.  I am a remarkably mediocre chess player and opening memorization is key at my level of play.  I am too lazy to memorize openings because it is somewhat of a chore.  Some people get excited about it but it is something that lets them get at the fun parts of the game, it's a chore in Starcraft 2 too.  In both games, if I don't use an opening that I pulled out of a can, I'm looking at like a 30% chance at winning.  The guy I usually play wrecks me using unusual opens that I haven't memorized the opening to, since I have very little book knowledge about gambit openings.

Honestly, your problem is not in the memorization of openings. I mean, if you play a non-book move, it's not that they just instantly crush you, unless it was just a bad move - in which case it's not really a "you didn't memorize" problem and more of a "you played a bad move" problem. There are very few lines that you just have to play exactly, particularly if you eliminate things like very obvious recaptures.

I mean, I know several grandmasters - they don't know these weird off-beat lines, almost at all, in general (each one might know one or two). They still beat the pants off the guys who spend lots of time preparing their pet weird lines, not because they have anything memorized, but because they just play good moves, understand general demands of positions, and can work out ways to get reasonable positions, from which point they proceed to outplay the opponent.
[/quote]

The fact that memorized opening led to such popularity for chess960, even among grandmasters, I think validates that as a concern for improving chess.  But I strongly agree with you that he didn't help with that.

I don't think chess960 is popular at all among grandmasters. Certainly, I don't think it's as possible as say, poker.

[popsofctown]

Honestly, your problem is not in the memorization of openings. I mean, if you play a non-book move, it's not that they just instantly crush you, unless it was just a bad move - in which case it's not really a "you didn't memorize" problem and more of a "you played a bad move" problem. There are very few lines that you just have to play exactly, particularly if you eliminate things like very obvious recaptures.

I mean, I know several grandmasters - they don't know these weird off-beat lines, almost at all, in general (each one might know one or two). They still beat the pants off the guys who spend lots of time preparing their pet weird lines, not because they have anything memorized, but because they just play good moves, understand general demands of positions, and can work out ways to get reasonable positions, from which point they proceed to outplay the opponent.

You're talking about grandmasters, which sounds to me like you're agreeing with my thesis: differences in opening knowledge don't matter much at highest levels of play, they matter the most at beginner/intermediate levels of play.  And I agree that it's something where, if you put time into the game and move up, becomes less and less of a flaw until it evaporates completely.  Starcraft is the same way, it's a great game too.

[WanderingWinder]

Honestly, your problem is not in the memorization of openings. I mean, if you play a non-book move, it's not that they just instantly crush you, unless it was just a bad move - in which case it's not really a "you didn't memorize" problem and more of a "you played a bad move" problem. There are very few lines that you just have to play exactly, particularly if you eliminate things like very obvious recaptures.

I mean, I know several grandmasters - they don't know these weird off-beat lines, almost at all, in general (each one might know one or two). They still beat the pants off the guys who spend lots of time preparing their pet weird lines, not because they have anything memorized, but because they just play good moves, understand general demands of positions, and can work out ways to get reasonable positions, from which point they proceed to outplay the opponent.

You're talking about grandmasters, which sounds to me like you're agreeing with my thesis: differences in opening knowledge don't matter much at highest levels of play, they matter the most at beginner/intermediate levels of play.  And I agree that it's something where, if you put time into the game and move up, becomes less and less of a flaw until it evaporates completely.  Starcraft is the same way, it's a great game too.

That's absolutely backwards. I'm not talking about the higher levels of play. I'm talking about someone who is very good playing against someone who is very bad. The good player wins in essentially any opening; my point was that his book knowledge doesn't give him much advantage IN THIS CASE.

Against other very strong players, this is significantly less true - some non-trivial percentage of the games (I don't know, 20% off the top of my head) are just decided out of opening preparation.
At my level and lower levels, essentially NONE of the games are decided by openings - they are mostly decided by blunders where someone just drops material to a tactic or something.

[liopoil]

I'm very much with WW here.

When you're just beginning, openings won't get you very far at all because you'll miss a tactic and drop a piece or something in the middlegame, or play a bad positional move and lose whatever advantage you may have gotten by playing slightly better in the opening. Much more important is to know general opening theory (develop your pieces, control the center, etc.), and to have good tactical vision so you don't fall into opening traps. This alone is enough for you to play moves that while they might not be the best, they won't be terrible. Memorizing moves only helps you get a slight advantage. This slight advantage will only make a difference at high levels of play. Also, at lower levels, your opponent usually will not follow main line, and will play some other weird sub-optimal line. Just knowing how to play good moves to take advantage of their not-so-good move is much more important.

Also, when we're talking about "levels" what ratings are we talking about approximately. When I think at the very high levels, I think 2200+. Low level to me is below 1300.

[popsofctown]

Weak openings give you more opportunities to blunder.  IMO opening memorization is pretty important in intermediate play.  It's kind of a matter of opinion thing I think.

[liopoil]

well, maybe, but I've been "intermediate" for quite some time and I am certain it has nothing to do with my opening preparation - in fact, I think I usually do better than my also-intermediate opponents in the opening.

more oppourtunities to blunder is fair, but all it takes is one sub-par middlegame move and it's gone. You can't expect to play evenly with your opponent in the middlegame and maintain that advantage throughout, much more likely is that you'll either lose your advantage or win, not because of your opening, but because you played better than them in the middlegame.

Or you can just study tactics and not blunder.

[WanderingWinder]

There's a big difference between memorizing good openings and playing the opening well. To the point, the latter is certainly possible without the former. Playing the openings badly hurts you at any level, no question. But other things are just way more important, particularly at non-master levels - as basically all the strong coaches will tell you.