So why am I proposing a variant to the game of Chess? The best answer to this question came from reading Chess Life magazine, the monthly that is publised by the United States Chess Federation (USCF). The following statments are verbatim transcripts from Chess Life interviews with 5 well known American players of International Master and Grandmaster caliber:
1. From Arnold Denker. This interview was published in the August 2001 edition of Chess Life. Denker is renowned in the Chess world for having been a great player in the mid 20th century.
COMPUTERS
"I guess it was inevitable that computers would eventually take over chess. Not too long ago you could sit across from your opponent and know whom you were playing. Not any longer. Like in the latest World Championship (probably the dullest ever) Kasparov was never given a chance to display his brilliance. The quality of play will probably get better, but at what a price? But if you fail to consult your computer you will be totally left out. If there is a bright spot in the future I can’t see it. Yes, more perfect but duller chess. Man has finally become a lackey to his invention."
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2. In the same issue of Chess Life, the magazine conducted an interview with another past American Grandmaster, Arthur Bisguier.
Interviewer: So the atomosphere has changed a lot in the chess world?
AB: Oh, totally. I would never be a chessplayer today. It was nothing like it is now. It’s not a creative game anymore. Well, that’s not true. It’s a creative game, but the creativity starts at Move 30 instead of Move 2. My chief fun was to try to get my opponent with original stuff. I could do that very early in the game in those days. I used to play games, and I’d get some new ideas that I’d use. Sometimes I could use those ideas for five years. Now, people would know the next day.
Interviewer: So you think the games been taken from the creative and beautiful to rote memorization?
AB: Well, it’s more than memorization. It’s the whole technical age. Everyone’s got a computer. I don’t play much anymore, but now it would be very hard for me. If an opponent knows he’s going to play me, he can press a button and get every game I ever played – at least the published ones. He’ll know my career better than I do.
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3. This letter was written to prominent American Gransmaster Larry Evans in the November 2001 issue of Chess Life:
Future Schach
Question: How can we uphold the integrity of human competition as computers approach perfection? Eventually anyone will be able to drop a pinhead – sized device into his ear while accomplices beam good moves. Must we set up jammers like the ones they have in Nevada casinos? And of course there will be a thousand other ways to cheat that nobody has dreamed of yet. It’s like all of the paranoid delusions of Bobby Fischer are coming true. What do you think the future holds?
LE: Who can speak the quick future that will arrive all too soon? Already at the 2000 Kramnik – Kasparov title match both players agreed to be strip – searched and spectators had to leave electronic devices and cell phones at the door.
At the 1993 World Open in Philadelphia a young man with dreadlocks and a headset calling himself John Von Neumann seemed to press something in his pocket after each move. He drew with a grandmaster and scored 4 ½ - 3 ½ in the unrated division but was denied the runner – up prize when he couldn’t provide identification.
At the U.S. Open a month later a player hearing strange beeping sounds and short bursts of static on the other side of the board went to summon the (tournament) director. His opponent fled, forgetting to grab a "cheat sheet" listing various tones and the pieces they represented …
Doesn’t this brave new world sound like fun?
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4. Strong Hungarian Grandmaster Peter Leko made the following remarks in the December 2001 issue of Chess Life:
PL: In the face of ever – increasing importance of openings the Fischer Random Chess system (FRC) is quite interesting as it offers opportunities insofar as this system enables you to really play chess while giving free rein to your own personality. I think it’s important to point out that FRC does not deny creativity. Take for example the Marshall Attack (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 a6 4 Ba4 Nf6 5 0-0 Be7 6 Re1 b5 7 Bb3 0-0 8 c3 d5). The first 20 moves are "normal moves" and let’s say the 21st, for example, will be something new.
You’re going to play a game but it won’t necessarily be your own, as it is events which will dictate your conduct…
Christophe Gueneau: I understand your point of view, but to a certain extent FRC renders all you have done null and void. With this new system all your work to find theoretical novelties and new plans from the opening is reduced to nothing. It’s surely a good thing for beginners but hardly for players of your caliber.
PL: You’re partly right, but at the same time, you must understand that FRC brings clear answers to all players who are not part of the elite. Certain GMs think, wrongly, that the best players in the world are better than they themselves are only because they can compete amongst themselves and are better prepared. In fact, the truth is otherwise, for the best players in the world have already shown that they excel not in openings alone, but they also have a deeper understanding of all the other parts of the game by far.
But this job means you must always be at the top in theory. For example you have to study the openings of Kasparov, what does he play, why does he do so, and finally try to find a gap, if you have to play against him. All of that takes an enormous amount of time and it is sometimes very taxing, since you have to invest an enormous amount of energy for a sometimes unpredictable result.
I am still young and I have only been giving time to this in the last two or three years, but I have the feeling that if it lasts five or six more yeaers thejob of chessplayer will become very difficult indeed! Try to imagine sitting in front of a computer for at least eight hours looking up the most recent games as well as the most recent theoretical novelties. This doesn’t leave much time for finding new ideas and giving free rein to your own creativity. As well as all that, you have to play in tournaments, otherwise none of it makes any sense.
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5. The following was an interview with famed Chess Author / Teacher Jeremy Silman that was printed in the February 2002 issue of Chess Life magazine:
Michael Jeffreys: How has being a chess professional changed from say, back in the sixties and seventies?
JS: It’s changed a lot. The game is getting ruined.
MJ: The game is getting ruined?! How?
JS: For the professional, things have become very hard. You’re forced to put in unbelieveable amounts of time studying openings. You have to go online and look for games played that day, for fear of missing out on a newly discovered key move. The masses of information have made chess more of a science, and taken away a lot of the artistic elements.
To me – and not everyone will agree with this! – a large part of the game’s charm was adjournments. I used to love the behind – the – scenes work that went into an adjourned position. That has been destroyed by computers, and adjournments are a thing of the past. Faster time controls are another curse; quick games don’t bring in more spectators, all they do is lower the precision of the games.
There is less and less sponsorship, less and less money, and more and more grandmasters. Tournaments are disappearing. I mean, it’s just really miserable. To be a successful professional you need to work your heart out, but where are the rewards…
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So there you are. Read this and weep for what is happening to chess. Chess players are traditionalists, but it's not hard to come to the conclusion that computers have changed a lot about chess.