| Eustace 2005-07-21, 8:33 pm |
| <http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0...html?tw=rss.CUL>
Unorthodox Chess From an Odd Mind
By Kevin Poulsen
02:00 AM Jul. 19, 2005 PT
Two dozen programmers from around the world have signed up to compete
in Germany next month in the first computer chess tournament devoted to
Chess960, a game variant invented by fugitive chess genius Bobby
Fischer that's slowly gaining rank among grandmasters.
The rules of Chess960 are mostly the same as orthodox chess -- but the
setup incorporates something once considered anathema to the game:
chance. Pawns begin where they always do. However, the pieces behind
them on the white side are arranged at random, with the proviso that
bishops must end up on opposite colors, and the king dwell somewhere
between the two rooks. The black pieces are lined up to mirror the white.
[
* See also
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* Chess Conspiracy Unconvincing
* Rage Against the (Chess) Machine
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]
That makes for 960 different starting positions in the game, instead of
just one. The point of Chess960 is to free chess from the yoke of
memorization.
The opening phase of a chess game as currently played has been subject
to a hundred years of scholarship and play, and today players are hard
pressed to find so much as a viable pawn push within the first 20 moves
that hasn't been thoroughly analyzed.
As a result, serious players spend considerable time memorizing
published openings as played by masters and grandmasters, so they know
the correct, time-tested response to every move an opponent makes. One
standard text on the subject, Modern Chess Openings, is 750 pages long,
and will tell you, for example, that the proper answer to white's pawn
advance on the 12th move of the Soltis Variation of the Yugoslav
Attack, a variant of the Sicilian Defense, is to move your king's rook
pawn.
"Bobby Fischer felt that this is not really what chess should be all
about," said Mark Vogelgesang with Chess Tigers, a German nonprofit
group organizing next month's tournament. "It should be about creativity."
Fischer unveiled the new chess at a 1996 press conference in Buenos
Aires. The idea was simple: With so many possible starting positions,
Chess960 -- or "Fischer Random Chess" -- takes rote memorization off
the board. Opening books are obsolete, and competitors live and die by
skill alone from the very first move.
The game makes room for casual players with day jobs to play at a
serious level, because they no longer have to devote hours of
preparatory time to studying opening variations.
Fischer captured the public's imagination in 1972 when he defeated
Boris Spassky in a match in ReykjavÃ_k, Iceland, to become the world
chess champion -- the first (and still only) American to hold the
title, which had long been dominated by Soviet players.
He lost the championship three years later when he refused to play
challenger Anatoly Karpov. Fischer then vanished from the chess world
for years, re-emerging in 1992 to play and win a reunion match against
Spassky, for a reported purse of $5 million. The match was held in
Yugoslavia, and Fischer participated in open defiance of U.S. sanctions
against that country. Back in the United States, federal prosecutors
indicted Fischer, who became a fugitive.
Despite the endorsement of one of the chess world's most famous, and
controversial, figures, years passed without Chess960 gaining much
traction. Then, in 2001, German aficionados began organizing Chess960
exhibition matches and open tournaments as part of the Chess Classic
Mainz -- an annual chess festival held outside Frankfurt that draws
players from throughout Europe.
In 2003, Russian grandmaster Peter Svidler defeated the Hungarian Peter
Leko to become the official Chess960 World Champion. Last year over 200
players, including scores of grandmasters, competed for the right to
challenge Svidler for the championship this year.
In the meantime, Chess960 also holds a strong appeal for chess
programmers. Conventional chess-playing programs, which can calculate
moves deep into the future, still rely on a digital version of an
opening book -- basically a lookup table dictating the right move for
two million or more positions. The random aspect of Chess960, on the
other hand, requires original analysis for each move.
Participants in the first Chess960 Computer World Championship are
coming from Holland, Greece, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands,
France, Germany and even the United States, says organizer Vogelgesang.
First place takes 1,000 euros ($1,200)
"It'll be great to get these programmers together," Vogelgesang said.
"The spectrum ranges from the amateur who does this in his spare time,
to the guy who lives for writing chess programs, and who is working day
and night to have the best chess program. I think it'll be a big blast."
An exhibition match the day before the event will put Svidler, reigning
Chess960 champion and the seventh-ranked chess player in the world,
across the board from a Chess960-playing program called the Baron for
two games. So far, such high-level man-machine battles are rare for
Chess960, leaving unanswered the question of whether the game favors
humans or machines.
In orthodox chess, the matter is largely considered settled in favor of
the computer, following Hydra's spanking of British grandmaster Michael
Adams last month in a six-game match in London. Adams drew one game
against the supercomputer, and lost the other five.
Last year, Armenian grandmaster Levon Aronian -- the 10th-rated chess
player in the world -- drew the Baron twice in a two-game Chess960
exhibition. Richard Pijl, the Netherlands-based coder who wrote the
Baron, says neither game gave his program much trouble, and he thinks
that Chess960 might turn out to be even better for computers than
conventional chess. "I think it would be more of a problem for a human
player than a computer, because the computer just calculates anyways,"
said Pijl. "But I'm not really certain that's true."
It's also unclear whether Chess960's reputation is helped, or hurt, by
Bobby Fischer's proselytizing.
Fischer was arrested in Japan last year on immigration charges after
the United States revoked his passport. From jail, Fischer continued
promoting the game he invented.
"I don't play chess anymore. I play Fischer Random," said Fischer, in a
radio interview from a Tokyo detention center last August. "You can
learn the rules in two minutes. It's a great game, and can become the
standard for chess."
After nine months in custody fighting U.S extradition, Fischer was
released last March to the nation of Iceland, which granted him
citizenship and a new passport.
Even before his arrest, Fischer was a controversial figure. Paranoid,
rabidly anti-Semitic and a Holocaust denier, the chess king sees
himself as the victim of a vast Jewish conspiracy aimed at everything
from stealing the royalties for a book he authored, to blocking his
work on an improved chess clock. He archives interviews and writings on
these topics on his personal website.
He notoriously celebrated the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in a
radio interview with Bombo Radyo, a small public-radio station in the
Philippines, a few hours after hijacked planes hurtled into the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands.
"This is all wonderful news," he said at the time. "It's time to finish
off the U.S. once and for all."
Vogelgesang says the chess world has mixed feelings about Fischer.
"People are very divided on him as a person and a chess player," says
Vogelgesang. "There are people who think what happened to him was
unjust, (and) there are people who are upset over the statements he
makes. Have you heard the statements he's made? They're very disturbing."
Though Chess960 is growing in popularity, it's not the first chess
variant to be proposed by a celebrity player, and seems unlikely to
displace orthodox chess. But it is finding support from unlikely quarters.
Last month, former world champion Anatoly Karpov, jilted by Fischer 30
years ago, publicly challenged his absent opponent to a match at his
own game.
"I would love to play Chess960 with Fischer," Karpov said, in an
interview published by ChessBase News. "It is not necessary to spend
ages preparing some opening variations, because there is just no
theory. It is important to be in good shape and to have a clear mind.
Then you can play a match with Fischer and you can even beat him."
So far, Fischer hasn't risen to accept the challenge.
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