Re: The "swap rule" in chess...

The Doctor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ron wrote:
>> Do we really want to force people to play out positions that they both 
>> know are draws?
>
> Yes please, coz we take away the possibility of someone making a mistake 
> in the 'known' plays

There are currently positions that good players will agree are drawn that
you want to force them to play out to the end.  You complain later in your
post that `chess has become a memory game', yet you propose to make
players prove that they remember the drawing sequence in a position rather
than just agreeing that both of them should be able to remember it or, at
the very least, to work it out over the board.

What you're doing is _increasing_ the amount of memorization required to
play good chess.  By insisting that players keep going to the bitter end,
you're turning chess into a competition to get into a known position and
reel off the known winning/drawing moves.  You're making people play a
game of chess to what is currently felt to be its natural conclusion and
then play a game of `pretend to be the computer' to decide who wins.  
Frankly, I don't see the point.


> or someone coming up with a brilliant move noonen had figured out yet.

Certain positions have been `proved' to be drawn by exhaustive computer
search.  (Inverted commas because there might, of course, be bugs in the
computer programs.)  You come up with the winning line and I'm sure we'll
all cheer you as the saviour of chess.


> Since the majority of chess games end up a draw anyway, they might as 
> well agree a draw right after the first move. Would that make it any
> better?

If that were the best strategy, don't you think more grandmasters would
use it?


Dave.

-- 
David Richerby                           Salted Sadistic Monk (TM): it's like
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/      a man of God but it wants to hurt you
                                         and it's covered in salt!