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Comment by mindgam3 | Hacker News Reader

At the amateur level, not much. Other than most amateurs spend way too much time relying on engine evals, and as a result don’t develop their own ability to learn “chess sense”.

Competitive players can now prepare easily for individual opponents, which is cool and used to only be feasible for pros.

For pros, it means that everyone plays the same safe openings, because they’re all “booked up” thanks to engines. Also many super sharp tactical lines have been conclusively decided by engines so can no longer be played. End result is world championships like the last one of all draws, which was just pathetic.

Most of the GMs I’ve asked about this in the last year have expressed that they no longer love playing classical chess because it’s so boring. Hence the rise of legit Chess960 and rapid tournaments at the top level.

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>> End result is world championships like the last one of all draws, which was just pathetic.

Yeah, this sucks. We've reached local maxima.

If it becomes too boring, the rules might be modified. Castling and en-passant were not always a given.

Something simple like a draw is 1/4 point for white, 3/4 point for black, might re-invigorate matches in classical format.

Or that if a player offers to draw, and the other player declines and goes on to win, they shall be offered 2x points.

I do wonder though, in a drawn situation, can't one player push for a win if they are ahead on time, which one of the players is sure to be? Why would anyone accept a draw if they are ahead on time?

Are you suggesting that one player could win by running out the clock? Classical gives players 30 more seconds after each move so it becomes unlikely to run out the clock.

I've invented several chess variants, none any good except for one which allowed you to take your own pieces. Seemed pretty good. Inevitably it's been done before https://www.chessvariants.com/difftaking.dir/selfeliminator.... So there's my offer for a new variant.

Interestingly, though, chess computers have also shown that even at superhuman skill levels, decisive, exciting games are possible.

AlphaZero and Lc0 have played many beautiful games against Stockfish. All three of these engines are far stronger than the strongest grandmasters. That implies that the drawishness of classical chess has to do with the conservatism of top grandmasters, who generally aren't willing to play the dynamic, seemingly risky style of an AlphaZero or Lc0. You have to really trust your own intuition and calculating abilities to play in that style.

I agree, it’s not all just due to engines. Carlsen is usually known for a more intuitive playing style, versus Caruana who is basically at the most extreme end of conservative calculator. If Lc0 can inspire the Caruanas of the world to play with more panache, there would be much rejoicing.

I hear a lot of claims that 960 eliminates opening theory, but is that really the case?

I have no experience in the format, but I imagined that patterns would emerge (and Chess players are already good at spotting transpositions), and people would start studying a different form of opening theory.

Chess960 eliminates opening theory... for now.

I expect Chess960 to rise significantly in popularity and relevance as classical chess declines, at which point theory will become developed.

But that will take a few years, and even then, being booked up in 960 will only provide a small edge compared to classical.

So classical chess is a style that would be obvious just by watching someone for a number of moves? That's very interesting.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Classical chess games tend to give players a lot of time. The world championship, for example, gives each player 90 minutes plus 30 seconds added after every move and an additional 30 minutes after move 40.

This is such a large amount of time, and the players get rest days with loads of time in between, that preparation becomes a huge factor. Players use top engines as well as databases (of every single move played by their opponent in tournament play) to cover every possible sharp line, leading to a lot of extremely safe (and correct) openings.

All of the above gets thrown out the window in the fast time controls (blitz and bullet). Players fall back on a mix of intuition and calculation and the games become highly dynamic, often with multiple opportunities for both sides (in a close match, rating-wise). Needless to say, it's a lot more fun to watch than a dozen draws in a row.

As an added point, the higher in rating you go, the more draws you see (against evenly matched opponents) at the classical time controls. This is because, while the rules of chess haven't changed with respect to what constitutes a draw, the number of draws by agreement goes way up. At the highest levels, there are many lines which can lead to a situation where neither player is willing to make even a slight concession to their position, thus they agree to a draw or a draw is forced by threefold repetition.

Classical chess just means you have more time on the clock at the start of the game.

What is meant by "classical chess"?

It's a tournament time format, typically 90 minutes per player with some amount of seconds added per move.

Other tournament time formats are "rapid" with 10 to 15 minutes per player, "blitz" of 3 to 5 minutes and "bullet" with 1 to 2 minutes.

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