Please, can we make white have to think for once?

CapAnson: 'That is in fact the problem with chess 960... It's by and large a game only for 20 or 30 people in the world, for everyone else it's a novelty.'

The idea is so new that it's a novelty for everyone, but I accept your point. I also wonder whether it's more interesting for experienced players than for beginning chess players. Time will tell.

As for how experienced you need to be to appreciate it, I think most class A players (rating 1800+) know that opening preparation goes a long way to getting a good game. It would be interesting to conduct a poll asking 'When you study chess, what percent of your time do you spend on A) the opening, B) the middlegame, C) the endgame, D) Other [history, for example]', then correlate the responses according to rating. I wouldn't be surprised to find average club players and below (<1500) spending a lot of time on openings.

What got me hooked on chess960 was being forced to think about the game starting with the first move. It's not at all the same as reeling off the first 10 moves of a Closed Lopez (or Poison Pawn Najdorf, or King's Indian Bayonet Attack, or ..., or ..., or ...) from force of habit, then relying on preparation for the next few moves, then really starting to think creatively somewhere around move 15. With chess960, the creative thinking starts when you see the initial position. You don't have to be a GM to enjoy that. Isn't the intellectual challenge one of the reasons we play chess? - Mark

All black has to do to remove this imaginary advantage is to prepare an opening move for each of the 18 possible first white moves. Then you could make an equally (in)valid claim that it is white who is the first one to have to think. But in truth, both players have to think during the opening, perhaps only as soon as the opponent comes up with a move that they are not totally prepared for. If you have to think early in the opening, this is usually a good thing as it means your opponent has played something unusual, which more often than not means something slightly inferior.

White does have a practical advantage from the start, probably best expressed as having a little more freedom in what they can play without compromising their position, but this is entirely separate from "having to think" or not.

Eh Elroch

Not quite sure I understand please feel free to clarify my misunderstanding. There's more than 18 possible first moves. Sixteen pawn moves, sometimes four knight moves and sometimes castling first move. That could be as many as 21 first moves (more than chess and sometimes less). How can you prepare against that except for deep theoretical principals that you have acquired through retrospective study of your Chess960 games?

In Chess960 we still do deep opening analysis in the same style that classical analysis is done but with a different objective (to accumulate principals not variations where principals still require vast memory). However that analysis is always retrospective after the game has been played, never before. That is the point that people like Kasparov have missed I think. That there is very deep opening research in Chess960 that is done retrospectively in the same fashion that Kasparov has proactively done for Chess openings. But retrospective leads to proactive knowledge of principals for the next 960 game anyway!

If I have memorized my opening plans for Chess, the only thing I could be thinking about on move one in standard chess, is to recall my memories clearly, or whether to play an alternative to fool my opponent somewhere in my repertoire. But that alternative is also memorized isn't it? White has spent a lot of time thinking about move 1, but not at the board, not at that moment. Chess960 restores the thinking to the game itself at that moment. Sorry for repeating myself.

Playing Chess960 today, feels what it must have been like for the generations of centuries ago in classical chess seated before the board. It's a beautiful turning back of the clock.....Post modern intersects with the enlightenment age! Actually it's nice to play Chess960 without timers as we do here online and as would have happened back then with classical chess. I promise not to put candles next to my Chess.com computer and turn off the lights ok? 

Hi Bemweeks

That is a nice thought about the hidden random element in standard chess that isn't often thought of in that way. As for opening preparation, from what I have experienced and talked to others about, in standard chess it's a 3:1 ratio for amateurs. Three hours on opening theory, one hour on tactics, and if you have spare time, endgame theory.

It certainly is an interesting question whether the ratio would be any different for Chess960. My guess would be that a young child would assimilate the principals of standard chess opening, play thousands of Chess960 games and then learn the principals of how and when to break the principals! After those early years, the player would then be able to put the opening to rest, and concentrate on midgame and endgame in equal proportion to the opening, never having to worry about some obscure "novelty" because you just cannot anticipate them (even if you are aware of the most obvious).

It's a question of how soon Chess960 opening principals could be acquired. For the very young, a good ten year stint at Chess960 would be enough I think to have mastered the essential game at a very high level. I don't think it is that different to Chess, but I am guessing.

Kramnik's amazing memory and bullet proof opening systems must have come from some really intense study on the opening as a child. I have read here that the theory is that the same amazingly efficient path ways in the brain for face recognition, are used by the very young to remember chess positions with the same circuitry. These days it seems that Kramnik is simply finding new resources within that bullet proof system, honing it like the finest craftsman with computer assistance. When he finds a novelty, it's easy to remember because that novelty ADDS to his opening systems without interfering with them at a fundamental level. An equivalent Chess960 player at the same stage of their career would be finding novelties that interfere fundamentally with what they understand even at that late stage in the career. Please do not think anyone that I am putting Kramnik down for that. He is a genius with such crafted understanding of chess it's simply breathtaking.

Cheers

Hi there

Just to wrap up this forum topic. I did introduce a little bit of confusion (just a little bit!?)

White has the turn at move one. In terms of development tempo, white is up one tempo in development at the start of the game. However I did add confusion to this topic by stating that white also has the initiative at move one. However that is debatable and is not at all certain. Tempo is easy to count. As Bemweeks has already pointed out over at his blog it takes a minimum of ten moves to complete development. A basic assumption is that whoever completes his development first also has the initiative. That is not always true but is at least a good starting point assumption. Over here I discuss the struggle between development tempo verses who has the initiative:

http://www.chess.com/groups/forumview/960-opening-theory-the-chess960-battle-for-tempo-and-initiative

So to wrap it, white definetly has a development tempo advantage at the start, but due to the complex interraction between micro tactics and positional necessities in some Chess960 positions, it is not necessarily the case that white also has the initiative. The discussion is actually no different in SP518 standard chess.

I apologize for that confusion.

Cheers

My point is extraordinarily simple, and was about chess, not chess960. The first post in the discussion claimed that white had an advantage because black was the first one to have to think about his move. In fact with very average memory, the player of the black pieces can have a move prepared for each of white's 20 legal moves if he wishes, and remove any such supposed advantage. The truth is that the player who has to think first is the player who finds himself in a position where he hasn't got an automatic move prepared, and this can be either white or black depending both on which is better prepared, and on which chooses to diverge from well-trodden paths first.