RotGut wrote on 04/04/08 at 16:33:59:


Not me.

I have no interest in making things I do more popular.  I do not need other people's inclusion to validate my own experiences and I am sincerely bewildered why other people have this need. 

My own experience from watching other things I enjoy become "mainstreamed" is that the process always saps the essence of the original pursuit and renders it a hollow carcass to be picked apart by the Vultures of economics.

I'll pass, thanks.

yea in the topalov- radjabov game as soon as the queen came off the board it said topa was +13. it kept wanting to hang a pawn.

Some interesting responses to this that I came across while reading an old Elista threaed:

I think it is safe to say that at any moment, any of the top GM is running a few computers to check on his favourite openining lines. And if grandmaster X is using only 2 comps and granmaster Y is using 5 of them then Y has a real edge. I do not claim that Y would always win with X, I just say that Y has a real advantage. To put it the other way, if any of top GM would stop using computers in his "home preparation" he would risk being out of the top in short time. Moreover, since computers are getting better and more powerful virtually with every day this process of replacing "preparation" with "computer cooked preparation" will play bigger and bigger role in chess. My question is- what is the difference between going to WC to get the winning move from your computer (I am not accusing Kramnik of cheating just making a point) and making the winning move from memory, though the move was found by your computer during "home preparation"? There is no difference.
Posted by: Bogdan Wojcieszyk at December 18, 2006 19:39 

Secondly of course Topalov's strategy is to play positions that he's studied in detail with computers and his opponents haven't. Its his new twist on the Kasparov strategy of studying certain openings with the aid of computers to extreme depth. Everyone is using computers (but not only computers) to do the research. Of course this is leading to more computer like play. None of that is cheating but yes its killing the game, some 1.e4 openings in particular have become unwatchable for me as they particularly lend themselves to this approach.
Posted by: Mark Crowther at December 19, 2006 03:56

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Chevalier wrote on 05/09/08 at 22:56:40:


See this HTTP URL....

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4612


What the players want is almost irrelevant. What FIDE wants is irrelevant. Instead, follow the money$.

If the sponsor of a major chess tournament announced that next year his well-funded tournament will be FRC (chess960), then it is certain the players would participate.

Chess cannot go on and on and on for another 15 decades with only this same one start position being reused endlessly and at-home analyzed to the point where novel moves rarely occur until well after 20 move-pairs.  Novelty delayed is novelty denied (to warp a common phrase from the world of criminal justice).

But FRC is not quite the answer either: full FRC is also too extreme, in the opposite direction.  So instead a compromise....

The future of chess is for a second start position to be announced, and then used for a period of perhaps a few years (instead of the usual setup).

It took centuries for modern opening analysis to become the beast it is today in the computerized era.  But it would not take centuries for the second start position to become heavily analyzed.  Make your own guesstimate....

How many years would it take for the depth of opening analysis of a second start position to reach the depth known in the days when M.Botvinnik was the World Chess Champion?  Would it take 30 years?  Of with Fritz would it take 3 years?  There is only one way to find out.

Imagine how grand it would be to watch the modern grandmaster community tear into the bowels of a second start position in a persistent and focused way!  Instead of struggling to find opening novelties, the GMs would not struggle to find novelties that are better than what their opponents are finding.  There would be a sudden and welcome abundance.

The traditional start position had numerous wonderful opening themes that were unknown to the inventors of modern chess in 1475.  They did not know about the Sicilian Dragon, or even about the French Defense in accurate way.  Today's GMs and amateurs are just as ignorant about what cool and intellectually interesting opening themes are right now waiting to be discovered in most of the other 479 start positions in FRC.

We are waiting for a wealthy sponsor to pick one of those 479.
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they mean to say there can be no opening preparation or home cooked computer work.

akin to this there was an interesting article in Chess Life that stated local chess clubs have been killed by ICC. This issue is related because the commentary generated predicted OTB chess would die within 50 years due to online chess. Not changing the subject though, the reasons stated why this wouldn't occur is because of technology. So technology has some other interesting effects.

The demise of chess is oft predicted but, judging by the books produced and tournaments held, it's not going to happen anytime soon.