Chess is too Boring
“Chess has
problems at the grandmaster level...They're not getting a great game”, wrote
Christian Donlan. Amen to that: Anand and his challenger, Magnus Carlsen
drew their first game in just 16 moves. It gets worse: games between the top 20
end in draws 60% of the time. And Donlan adds that “games often end in
resignation when an actual victory starts to loom on the distant horizon.” That
often means that the average player (or fan) often has no clue why one guy won (since he can’t see that
far ahead)!
Then there’s all
that memorization (of openings, of end games and everything in between). All
that memorization is sort of against the spirit of the game, says Zachary
Burns, “We want it to be a game of creativity and positional play.” Many have
tried to change the rules of the game in the past for these exact reasons,
including Bobby Fischer with his Chess960 variant.
More recently, David
Sirlin tried to make things interesting via his variant, Chess 2. So what are
his changes?
1) Midline invasion: this is a way to win the game outside
of the regular checkmate. It can be done anytime during the game, and its aim
is to incentivize players to go for the kill rather than plod on boringly once
they see a way to win 30 moves down on the road!
2) 6 armies to choose from: Each player can pick from 6 armies at
the start. They have different rules for
each army e.g. one has a teleporting Queen (chess finally goes space age!),
another allows knights, bishops and rooks to swap roles under certain
circumstance. What’s the point of all this? To make the permutations so high
that memorization of every situation becomes impractical. And it brings in
asymmetry, which as Burns says, “It (Asymmetry) opens up a lot of interesting
imbalances, and gets players into the right mode of thinking about what chess
was supposed to be.”
3) Duelling: When your piece is taken, you have the
option to call for a duel. In a duel, each player holds an unknown number of
stones in his fist. Then they check how many each has, and the winner gets to take
the piece that took his piece. The kicker? All the stones in each player’s fist
are now out of the game. That means how many you take in your fist needs to
factor in long term v/s short term considerations.
Personally, I
don’t like the dueling idea (smacks of poker skills rather than chess). And
regardless of whether or not Sirlin’s approach is the way to do it, I am
definitely in favour of some changes coming to the game to make it more
interesting, more result oriented and yeah, more fun.
You say, "David Sirlin tried to make things interesting via his variant, Chess 2". I don't think there are going to be any takers for this idea. It is not easy to change the basic chess. It is true that some variations did occur in the basic rules themselves, when Europe took interest in the game and brought it to a level that we see today. Tournament rules continue to change, to meet demands and counter objections,of course. However, unlikely that any real upheaval is likely in the game.
ReplyDeleteWhet you say is indeed true. Chess has become boring and dull indeed. Early in the last century, when chess was getting formalized through tournaments and titles in Europe, there were many sparkling games. That happened due to two reasons. Firstly there was much difference in the levels of the players. A low grade master may be playing against a high-grade grand-master, in a formal tournament! Or, even between grand-masters, there was less thoroughness in defense in those days. That was why, queens could occasionally, rooks sometimes and bishops and knights quite freely in those days. Result: surprise and excitement, both during the tournaments and later study of the games.
Today, the level difference is not that big between tournament players for specific titles. And also, the defenses are thorough. Further, the openings are studied in so much detail that simple surprises are not possible at all.
Nobody anymore thinks of either offering pieces by way of sacrifice for a grand finale. The strategies are to either gain positional advantage, hoping for a piece to be gained over the time. Or, to somehow go for the kill for a small piece like knight or bishop, not rook, much less the queen. Lastly, even for that gain, the players hope for a small slip to occur in the other players game, or, pressure towards that through time limitation.
Chess is no longer exciting to the common man. and players no longer play it as a game - for them it is high adrenaline for grabbing the big title money. It is a sad truth that sportsmanship is a thing of the past and aggression, often needless, is high in all people's minds.