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

Ron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>  [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David J Bush) wrote:
> 
> 
> > First of all, just because a position is "equal" doesn't mean it will
> > tend to lead to a draw. 
    ^^^^

>  Granted. But this was not my conjecture. I'm claiming that an equal 
> position is MORE LIKELY to lead to a draw than an unequal position. 
> 
>  Ergo, more equal positions=more draws. (I didn't say that a more equal 
> position would result in only draws, now, did I?)

No you didn't. Neither did I. I direct your attention to the word "tend"
in the snippet you quoted. Looks like we are in agreement about that. What
we disagree on is whether or not more equal positions= more draws. The
only way to settle the issue, as far as I can tell, would be to try it
out with some players and see what happens.
 
> > I don't follow what the incentive would be for players to "settle on a few
> > positions." Most strong players would rather win games than draw them.
> > There are over 10 thousand positions the first player could create with
> > 3MEQ. 
> 
>  Yeah. But there are 20 moves that a player can make with his first move 
> in standard chess, but in practice we see 4 of them the overwhelmingly 
> vast majority of the time, and 2 or 3 others make up the overwhelmingly 
> vast majority of the exceptions.
> 
>  With 3MEQ, you can talk about 10 thousand theoretical positions, but 
> the truth is you instantly throw out ALL of them where there is an 
> obvious advantage, however slight, for either side. That's going to 
> whittle the number down pretty quickly. 

Oh, absolutely! But there will still be more variety in openings than
currently exists. You can call the number "few" and I can call the number
"many."
 
>  Furthermore, chess at a high level has never been about traps, so it 
> seems likely that the trappy variations you hypothesize would only be an 
> issue among weak amateurs, who, honestly, make enough mistakes that the 
> advantage of the first move means less.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "trap." It seems you regard a trap
as something high level players don't use between themselves. My latest
issue of New in Chess (2003 nr. 6) features an exciting game between
Viswanathan Anand and Viktor Bologan. Anand sprang an opening novelty which
he had prepared last year, which led to his victory over Bologan. I would
call that novelty a high-level trap. You can call it whatever you like.