In tennis, on every point there's a big advantage to the server. Not because he "gets to go first" but because he gets a second chance in some situations. You can prove this: in high level mens tennis the server wins ~70% of points [0] but on a second serve - equivalent to playing without the second chance - he wins almost exactly 50% [1]
This creates a tension in every game where one player is attacking and expected to win, the other player needs to "break" him at least once or twice in the course of the match to win the overall contest.
Chess is similar, but worse because of the possibility of draws. 60-90% of top level chess games end in draws.
Computer chess is even worse again! 95%+ of top computer play ends in draws. Organisers of engine tournaments have solved this: they let the computers play from positions considered advantageous to white, usually where they expect White to score ~75%. They play each position with both White and Black. [2]
This wouldn't be a popular or practical change for human play. But that's not the point, letting White take back his moves à la tennis wouldn't be a change people would accept either. The point is that chess isn't in need of evening out the first-move advantage.
[0] https://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/statsLeaders [1] https://www.braingametennis.com/the-art-of-winning-2nd-serve... [2] https://tcec-chess.com/articles/TCEC_Openings_FAQ.html
What about Fischer random chess? That could help, no? I heard that even Magnus Carlsen played in some tournament with it.
What's more mystifying to me is that in a weird variant like Duck Chess which has oddly gained a lot of popularity online, where so much of the hard work is invalidated anyway, they don't take the opportunity to fix the starting imbalance. In particular, in that variant it would be so easy: just let the first move be duck only!
I don't see why that would make a significant theoretical difference. Black plays first and moves the duck, he can block either e4 or d4 (or something offbeat like g6 if what he wants is to get a Modern Defence at all costs) but not the other one. I suppose there's a practical difference where White couldn't specialise in e4- or d4- openings, and Black gets to choose which to face depending on the opponent.
(And in any case, as above, I disagree with the thesis that the imbalance should be "fixed").
It's fairly significant given the 'theoretical' assumption that perfect play always ends in a draw. However, in practice, whites wins significantly more than black.
> In tennis, on every point there's a big advantage to the server. Not because he "gets to go first" but because he gets a second chance in some situations.
Yes. It allows servers to take chances and go all out on their first serve. It's extremely beneficial to power servers. But you don't get 'take backs' in chess. So your analogy doesn't apply. You can't gamble with white and if black knows the opening, then start all over with another opening.
> The point is that chess isn't in need of evening out the first-move advantage.
As long as both players get equal chances to play with white. No player would agree to a tournament where you get black 10 times and your opponents gets white. Just like no tennis player will agree to a tournament where his opponents gets to serve all game.
As you computer chess stats show, it seems like better play leads to more draw. And the assumption that if chess is solved, then perfect chess is always a draw. But that's not how it works in the real world. White has a distinct advantage. Whether it is due to human psychology or something else altogether is up for debate.
But that makes the “force draw” problem even worse. I guess it’s a lot more fair to make draws easy to achieve. I don’t know if it’s fun.
1. White makes their opening moves - they can move more than one piece, and even the same piece more than once, but: all moves must be legal, and no captures.
2. When White is done, Black has the option to change sides, taking over the white pieces.
3. Regardless of step 2, the player with the black pieces makes the next move.
4. A draw counts as a win for the player with the black pieces.
Thus there are no longer drawn results, and the start must be relatively equal (between a white win and a black win or draw) in White’s estimation.
So I propose that after White made all their opening moves, Black likewise makes their arbitrary legal moves, and then it's White who has the choice of swapping.
That should not only make the game fair, and optionally guarantee wins with your draw rule, but also eliminate all opening preparation.
There should probably be a limit on the number of moves that each player makes in their opening; perhaps around a dozen.
Thanks! I was put off by how much the article's solution changes the nature of the game, saw someone's comment about chess being too even and draws already being a problem, and it hit me in a flash how to largely solve both problems at once.
I agree that White potentially has an advantage because they can play a deceptively strong or weak opening, hoping to fool Black into a bad choice, but I don't see that as too much of a problem, but maybe I'm wrong -- I'm no expert at chess.
Turning a game of perfect information into a bluffing and anticipation game is not a minor change. It's a fundamental change of the essence of what the game is.
I don't think anywhere its stated that the author wanted to leave a game unchanged. Or as unchanged as possible.
In this perspective I think this article/exercise is not "an utter failure". Its pretty decent.
Magnus for example talks about the importance of purposely making a sub-optimal move as a way to bluff your opponent. Your opponent likely has memorized all the optimal moves and so you make a sub-optimal move to leave your opponent guessing whether you made a genuine mistake that you can be punished for, or whether you made that sub-optimal move on purpose because you studied it extensively whereas your opponent has not and you know if your opponent doesn't play it absolutely perfectly you can trap them.
I mean seriously you can watch the championship for free on Twitch right now with GM Naroditsky and GM Rozman, and they don't really talk that much about what the theoretical best moves are, they talk about the psychology, about players going on tilt, about making aggressive moves to throw your opponent off. It's fun and fascinating.
> Rule 2: a. Moves are tried in both orders, and only moves that are legal in both orders are merged. b. If both moves are legal in both orders but a different game state is reached in each order, neither move is merged.
> All of these scenarios illustrate rule 2a. Rule 2b is in fact irrelevant for chess, because successful moves always commute.
in the article.
Source: I fought in (and won!) a one-off chessboxing exhibition match in London back in 2012
So for top players (and even more-so for top chess engines), the white advantage isn't enough to translate to a win.
In human play, the top players often need to play suboptimal moves to convert a win. Magnus Carlsen is probably the most famous for doing this. The point is to break away from the well studied lines, and play something that other pros aren't familiar with.
Basically: It's not clear that white's small advantage actually counts for much, at least at the very top tiers of chess.
Changing the game in such a way that white and black odds become even more balanced, would just lead to more draws - which I personally would think makes the game less interesting.
We should have to create many rules to avoid this.
Nice post :)
This is how esports are balanced, and how a game like Starcraft was (at least when I played) more fair than Chess even though there were three "colors" involved (Zerg, Protoss, Terran) and way more "pieces" and complexity.
1 - http://www.hexenspiel.de/engl/synchronous-chess/ 2 - https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/synchronous-chess
These observations are interesting as they give a test suite, or 'local properties', that can be run against any given simultaneous ruleset to characterize it. It would be fascinating to be able to run an AI to have an idea of how 'optimal strategies' (global properties) would look like in each case and see what relations we can draw from it.
(unfortunately I would assume it is still unreasonably costly to do something like this?)
