Is BAP Chess = Chess?
Among the questions bandied about in our controversy of Clint Ballard's brainchild is this: is the BAP system a "pairing change", a chess variant, or still something else?
Ballard himself has chosen door #1: that it's a pairing system, but I find this wildly implausible. Maybe the system has some implications for swiss system pairings (for example, maybe last round pairings should not match players with the same scores, but set things up so that, where possible, those with White have one point more than their opponents), but it won't have any effect on the pairings for a round-robin event. As far as I can tell, the only effect BAP has on the world of round-robin tournaments is that all such tournaments probably need to have an even number of rounds. Nevertheless, this doesn't make BAP a pairing system, so I think we can reject this thesis.
On the other hand, Jon Jacobs has insisted, in various comments both on this blog and elsewhere, that using BAP produces something that isn't chess as we know it, but a variant. Why? I don't think Jacobs is as clear as he could be, but the essential idea is that the rules of the game have changed because the fundamental goal structure of the game has changed. Traditionally, the primary goal is to win; secondarily, it's not to lose. But as a White draw nets him the same goose egg (no points) a loss achieves, the secondary goal has been (largely?) eliminated when one has White.
I find this account more plausible than Ballard's, but I'm not fully persuaded - there's more work for Jacobs to do. First, we should distinguish between different sorts of rules. A couple of weeks ago, I exchanged a few emails with another chess teacher on USCF's recent decision to mandate recording one's moves only after playing them. My interlocutor thought it was a terrible idea while I was somewhat in its favor, but neither of us thought our dispute was over two forms of chess. USCF did make a change to the rules of the game, broadly construed, but it's what we might call a nonessential change, not an essential change.
It's worth saying a little more about this, as the distinction between the essential and the non-essential is crucial here. A property is essential to a thing if, if a thing loses that property, it ceases to be that thing; that is, it ceases to exist. An example or two might help. It's an essential property of a sphere that, for any two points on its surface, each point is equidistant from the center of the sphere. Should something happen to the object to mar its surface, it ceases to exist as a sphere. (It could continue to exist as a hunk of marble, as a decorative object, etc.) Or suppose we think it's an essential property of a human being, that he have self-consciousness. What this would mean, if true, is that a sleeping human is in fact not a human being at all! Unless one wants to bite the bullet and claim that (non-REM) sleepers are corpses of a special sort, it would be better to rescind this alleged essential property.
Let's contrast this with non-essential properties. When I cut my fingernails, I've undergone a change, but it's not one that affects my essential nature. If I was a human being before, merely changing the length of my fingernails doesn't change that. On the other hand, if I'm flattened by a steamroller, a la good old Warner Brothers cartoons, then I'm not a really short human being; I'm an ex-human being. Or rather, physically speaking, I'm not, period - I've ceased to exist as an embodied human being.
Back to chess: the dispute over when one can record the moves is clearly non-essential: it was chess before the rule change, and it's still chess after the rule change. So not all rule changes affect the essential properties of the game, but others do. If kings start moving like kings in checkers, we've clearly created a variant of the game; it's not longer chess-as-we-know-it.
The really tough question, then, is what the essential rules of the game are, such that if any of them are changed, we're talking about a variant and not the "normal" version. One possibility, which might be Jacobs' view - but it need not be - is this: the essential, non-negotiable rules include the following:
1. The rules for moving the pieces (including captures, castling, en passant and pawn promotion).
2. The rules for checkmate, stalemate and other drawing scenarios.
3. The goal-rules: a win is worth a point, a draw half a point, a loss nothing.
This is a plausible list, and probably at least very close to what we'd all say if asked by relatives to give a 5-10 minute summary of the rules. But there are difficulties under all three headings.
Ad 1: All of these have changed over the years, and castling, pawn promotion and en passant (together with the pawn's double move) in particular are relative newcomers on the scene. Each rule made for a big change, but was it an essential change?
Ad 2: Checkmate is an absolutely ancient part of the game, but stalemate isn't. More to the point, the drawing rules have been in great flux within my lifetime: there have been the Sofia rules and other attempts to delay/deny draws by agreement, but there have been other changes as well. One short-lived change was the revocation of the 50-move rule for certain endings (e.g. 2 Bs vs. N) when computers proved wins taking more than 50 moves to achieve. So rules of type 2 are more flexible than we might initially think.
Ad 3: There have been changes here too, over the years, though the current point system goes back to at least 1867. (That might sound relatively recent, but with London 1851 generally considered the first international event, it's really not.) Yet there are exceptions to this system even in our time. What were the scores of the Karpov-Korchnoi world championship matches? No one says "16.5-15.5 and 11-7, Karpov" but 6-5 and 6-2, Karpov. Karpov-Kasparov I was terminated when the score was 5-3, not 25-23.
So maybe we need to revise the essential heart of our scoring system, and I think this can be done in a way that extends the tradition even before 1851. Here's the revision: a win by either side counts, equally, for a point apiece (but what about the Spassky-Portisch candidates' match? - that's at least a mini-problem), while a draw (a) counts for less than a win, and (b) intrinsically favors neither player. There have been objections to (b) over the years (based largely on anti-stalemate sentiments), but it is a pretty stable tradition.
Is (b) essential? Here's a little argument to suggest that it may not be. The conditions given might be seen as one way of expressing something still more fundamental ideas at the heart of the draw: first, the need to handle non-decisive results; second, to do so in a way that facilitates the overall event. The goal of the game is to win, but that's not always possible. So what do we do? Ideally, replay the games or otherwise disregard the draw in pursuit of decisive results. That was true in London 1851 and New York 1857, and more recently in various candidates' and world championship matches.
Unfortunately, this can easily generate logistics problems, though (recall once more K-K I), so the half-point solution was an economical way to address the two fundamental ideas of the last paragraph. It's a nice way to handle everything, and one that takes into account the near-parity of White and Black. If there's another way to satisfy the fundamental ideas, though, then why not? Why won't it still be chess?
Note that this stops short of endorsing BAP: to suggest that Jacobs' argument at the very least needs supplementation and at worst fails doesn't show that just anything goes. I could continue, but I think this is enough for tonight, and I'll allow Jacobs and others to pick up the ball and run with it where they will.
Ballard himself has chosen door #1: that it's a pairing system, but I find this wildly implausible. Maybe the system has some implications for swiss system pairings (for example, maybe last round pairings should not match players with the same scores, but set things up so that, where possible, those with White have one point more than their opponents), but it won't have any effect on the pairings for a round-robin event. As far as I can tell, the only effect BAP has on the world of round-robin tournaments is that all such tournaments probably need to have an even number of rounds. Nevertheless, this doesn't make BAP a pairing system, so I think we can reject this thesis.
On the other hand, Jon Jacobs has insisted, in various comments both on this blog and elsewhere, that using BAP produces something that isn't chess as we know it, but a variant. Why? I don't think Jacobs is as clear as he could be, but the essential idea is that the rules of the game have changed because the fundamental goal structure of the game has changed. Traditionally, the primary goal is to win; secondarily, it's not to lose. But as a White draw nets him the same goose egg (no points) a loss achieves, the secondary goal has been (largely?) eliminated when one has White.
I find this account more plausible than Ballard's, but I'm not fully persuaded - there's more work for Jacobs to do. First, we should distinguish between different sorts of rules. A couple of weeks ago, I exchanged a few emails with another chess teacher on USCF's recent decision to mandate recording one's moves only after playing them. My interlocutor thought it was a terrible idea while I was somewhat in its favor, but neither of us thought our dispute was over two forms of chess. USCF did make a change to the rules of the game, broadly construed, but it's what we might call a nonessential change, not an essential change.
It's worth saying a little more about this, as the distinction between the essential and the non-essential is crucial here. A property is essential to a thing if, if a thing loses that property, it ceases to be that thing; that is, it ceases to exist. An example or two might help. It's an essential property of a sphere that, for any two points on its surface, each point is equidistant from the center of the sphere. Should something happen to the object to mar its surface, it ceases to exist as a sphere. (It could continue to exist as a hunk of marble, as a decorative object, etc.) Or suppose we think it's an essential property of a human being, that he have self-consciousness. What this would mean, if true, is that a sleeping human is in fact not a human being at all! Unless one wants to bite the bullet and claim that (non-REM) sleepers are corpses of a special sort, it would be better to rescind this alleged essential property.
Let's contrast this with non-essential properties. When I cut my fingernails, I've undergone a change, but it's not one that affects my essential nature. If I was a human being before, merely changing the length of my fingernails doesn't change that. On the other hand, if I'm flattened by a steamroller, a la good old Warner Brothers cartoons, then I'm not a really short human being; I'm an ex-human being. Or rather, physically speaking, I'm not, period - I've ceased to exist as an embodied human being.
Back to chess: the dispute over when one can record the moves is clearly non-essential: it was chess before the rule change, and it's still chess after the rule change. So not all rule changes affect the essential properties of the game, but others do. If kings start moving like kings in checkers, we've clearly created a variant of the game; it's not longer chess-as-we-know-it.
The really tough question, then, is what the essential rules of the game are, such that if any of them are changed, we're talking about a variant and not the "normal" version. One possibility, which might be Jacobs' view - but it need not be - is this: the essential, non-negotiable rules include the following:
1. The rules for moving the pieces (including captures, castling, en passant and pawn promotion).
2. The rules for checkmate, stalemate and other drawing scenarios.
3. The goal-rules: a win is worth a point, a draw half a point, a loss nothing.
This is a plausible list, and probably at least very close to what we'd all say if asked by relatives to give a 5-10 minute summary of the rules. But there are difficulties under all three headings.
Ad 1: All of these have changed over the years, and castling, pawn promotion and en passant (together with the pawn's double move) in particular are relative newcomers on the scene. Each rule made for a big change, but was it an essential change?
Ad 2: Checkmate is an absolutely ancient part of the game, but stalemate isn't. More to the point, the drawing rules have been in great flux within my lifetime: there have been the Sofia rules and other attempts to delay/deny draws by agreement, but there have been other changes as well. One short-lived change was the revocation of the 50-move rule for certain endings (e.g. 2 Bs vs. N) when computers proved wins taking more than 50 moves to achieve. So rules of type 2 are more flexible than we might initially think.
Ad 3: There have been changes here too, over the years, though the current point system goes back to at least 1867. (That might sound relatively recent, but with London 1851 generally considered the first international event, it's really not.) Yet there are exceptions to this system even in our time. What were the scores of the Karpov-Korchnoi world championship matches? No one says "16.5-15.5 and 11-7, Karpov" but 6-5 and 6-2, Karpov. Karpov-Kasparov I was terminated when the score was 5-3, not 25-23.
So maybe we need to revise the essential heart of our scoring system, and I think this can be done in a way that extends the tradition even before 1851. Here's the revision: a win by either side counts, equally, for a point apiece (but what about the Spassky-Portisch candidates' match? - that's at least a mini-problem), while a draw (a) counts for less than a win, and (b) intrinsically favors neither player. There have been objections to (b) over the years (based largely on anti-stalemate sentiments), but it is a pretty stable tradition.
Is (b) essential? Here's a little argument to suggest that it may not be. The conditions given might be seen as one way of expressing something still more fundamental ideas at the heart of the draw: first, the need to handle non-decisive results; second, to do so in a way that facilitates the overall event. The goal of the game is to win, but that's not always possible. So what do we do? Ideally, replay the games or otherwise disregard the draw in pursuit of decisive results. That was true in London 1851 and New York 1857, and more recently in various candidates' and world championship matches.
Unfortunately, this can easily generate logistics problems, though (recall once more K-K I), so the half-point solution was an economical way to address the two fundamental ideas of the last paragraph. It's a nice way to handle everything, and one that takes into account the near-parity of White and Black. If there's another way to satisfy the fundamental ideas, though, then why not? Why won't it still be chess?
Note that this stops short of endorsing BAP: to suggest that Jacobs' argument at the very least needs supplementation and at worst fails doesn't show that just anything goes. I could continue, but I think this is enough for tonight, and I'll allow Jacobs and others to pick up the ball and run with it where they will.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Is BAP Chess = Chess?
- The"BAP" System Revisited: A Prelude
Posted by Dennis Monokroussos on
Sunday August 27, 2006 at 1:25am
I did not attempt to form a complete framework of what is and isn't essential to chess.
Near the end of this post Dennis hints at alternatives to BAP, that would score a draw as some number between 0.01 and 0.99 point for each side. Such alternatives presumably would meet the draw-discouraging goal of BAP, while steering clear of the other goal, offsetting White's opening advantage.
I think I made a very strong case that changing the reward system as much as BAP does is an essential rule change. I'm less certain that ANY change in point awards --- in particular, those alternative systems Dennis hinted at -- would necessarily have to be considered an essential change as well.
I guess if a critical goal of this discussion is to clarify and reach agreement on what is essential to the definition of chess, then I (and probably others) need to think it through in greater depth.
Now, trying to think like a philosopher (or a lawyer or mathematician), it seems inconsistent to assert that an alternate anti-draw rule that didn't penalize White -- such as the simple expedient of scoring a draw as 1/3 point for each side -- would NOT be an essential change (i.e., would still be chess), after I've already pronounced BAP IS an essential change.
What do you think, Dennis? Does A imply B? Or -- my personal feeling, to be honest -- is this just counting angels on the head of a pin?
In fact, I am less interested in the philosophical question than the practical implications. For instance, I argued in my letters to the USCF Ratings Committee and Rules Committee that BAP tournaments should not be USCF ratable because the scoring system is an essential rule change that makes BAP a chess variant. But such an extreme judgment is hardly a necessary condition for deciding an event isn't ratable.
"Thematic" tournaments (where every game starts with the same, pre-determined opening) are not ratable. Fischerrandom/960 chess is not ratable. Yet the first is obviously "real" chess, played from a different starting position. And I consider the second, chess960/FRC, also to be "real" chess -- again, played from a different starting position. But neither type of event is eligible to be rated, and I wouldn't want them to be -- at least not within the "regular" USCF rating system.
Similarly, even if I were to conclude that an alternate rule defining a draw as = 1/3 point for both sides did not alter the fundamental essence of chess, I would not want such events to be eligible for USCF rating.
Finally, it should be so clear that banning or restricting draws by agreement (the Sofia rules) is NOT an essential rule change, that I see no need to even provide an argument.
Insofar as I understand your argument, it's not so much a strong "case" as a pair of assertions:
1. Changing the objective of the game counts as a(n essential) rule change.
2. The BAP system changes the objective of the game.
The current post was mainly intended to show that claims presupposing (1) suffer the potential problem that what counts as an essential rule turns out to be less than obvious in a wide variety of cases. But I also say things that are relevant to (2) as well: the primary goal of the game is to win (BAP doesn't change that), and secondarily it's not to lose (BAP doesn't change that either - except arguably in its most dubious provision, the zero-point White draw).
Finally, to reiterate my closing point, my discussion wasn't an endorsement of BAP, but a critique or at least a challenge of an easy appeal to a rule change of some sort implying the product isn't chess. If people don't just share your intuitions (that is, don't just "see" that a given rule change really is "essential"), then if you want to rationally persuade them you'll need to provide a principled reason based on shared premises. My post attempted to lay out some of the conceptual groundwork for you in advance. It's a way of facilitating progress, which is what philosophers try to do when they reach an impasse - it's not counting pin-dancing angels.
As interesting as it is, I will abstain from the philosophical debate on whether the scoring system is an essential or non-essential rule. My logic might be simplistic, but it starts with the postulate that chess is broken and needs to be fixed. Another postulate is that a change to the scoring system will be easier to get adopted than changing how a piece moves, or changing how stalemates are treated. Since those changes have been made in the past, there is precedence for significantly bigger changes than BAP. That gives me some hope :)
Specifically addressing Jon's position that BAP games should not be USCF rated, I ask him politely to reconsider his opposition. First, the number of games being played under BAP is very small and its effect on the overall rating pool is negligible. There is also no evidence that players have any statistically significant variation in their performance at BAP tournaments, so that further minimizes its impact on the rating pool. Now, it is hard enough to get people to play in a BAP tournament as it is so new, if it isn't rated, then I cannot get serious games to be played and the data on draw percentages would be totally invalid. Since Jon is so concerned about the sanctity of the rating system for some reason, why not start with a 1000 times bigger problem that is contaminating the ratings significantly. I am talking about last round games at tournaments where prize money is at stake. I don't think anybody will seriously take the position that these games have much to do with chess, when we are expecting people to quickly draw or even offer and take bribes to throw games! It is proven that this is happening, yet where is your outrage about this Jon? Have you written letters to the USCF to not rate these last round money games? There is no evidence that BAP tournaments is generating any rating skew and even if it is, the total number of games is so small, why do you care so much??
Rather that get tangled in unanswerable philosophical questions or to rate or not to rate debates, I want to focus on the big picture. That is to boost the money flowing into chess tenfold. Currently, only a very small group of the strongest players can make a living actually playing the game. Masters who would love to make $100,000 per year (after expenses) just playing chess face the brutal reality that GM's under 2700 are having a hard time doing that. The love of the game draws these masters into being columnists (for the lucky ones who landed the small number of these jobs) and by and large end up teaching. By contrast, the equivalent of a class player in poker can make $100,000 per year just playing online poker. Does that seem wrong to you? It does to me and it seems a lot more important than what should and shouldn't be rated. I did a quick analysis and I think BAP3 should be used for ratings anyway, but ratings are secondary. In tennis, golf, etc. they have the equivalent of ratings, but people only care about the prize money winnings and tournaments won. So it is quite possible to have ratings independent of prize money and tournament pairings. Ratings should be a reflection of a player's strength based on actual games played. BAP3 is an improvement over 1867, but I am not about to start a BAP3 rating service since what matters is prize money winnings and winning tournaments.
With ten times the money flowing into chess, the attrition rate of scholastic players cannot help but decrease and possibly very significantly. I don't think anybody would debate this point with me. So, the question then becomes how this could happen. The answer is TV. TV is what allowed poker class players to make six figure incomes that previously were limited to poker masters. Note that I am just trying to get it so that chess masters can make six figure incomes, not class players. In TV, sports are popular, so chess as a sport is a logical approach. However, no successful TV sport has anywhere close the draw percentage master level chess does. NHL instituted a shootout (equivalent of speed chess after draw) to eliminate the 11% rate of tied games. With 5 times that rate, chess has no chance as a TV sport.
So, we have the constraints I am working with. Make the smallest change to chess so that every game has a winner and a loser. Hence BAP. Draws are allowed with BAP, it is the equivalent to a field goal by black [to carry the analogy further a win by white is a touchdown without extra point and a win by black is a touchdown + field goal]. BAP has been proven to eliminate the lifeless draws and the draws that it does have are the ones that everyone complains that white gets zero points for, eg. interesting fighting draws. The logic seems to be that since white gets zero points for these interesting draws, they won't happen, but BAP actually increases these fighting draws to being 25% of the games played.
Now, the major TV sports are continually change the rules of the game. Basketball: 24 second shot clock, three point shot, definition of offensive/defensive fouls, etc. Baseball: strike zone enforcement, height of mound, baseball itself (?), stadium size, etc. Have you ever considered how exciting golf on TV is? Chess sure seems to have just as much excitement. If we can get chess to get TV ratings comparable to golf, the average GM would be able to make what the average PGA pro makes.
Jon, you are clearly a very smart person. Any interest in helping me or at least suspending your efforts to hurt me?
Just for fun, I merged the 2005 PGA tournament earnings list with the top chess players list. Note that this does not count any endorsement money which for the top players dwarfs their tournament winnings and I am virtually certain that poker players ranked like this make more than the golfers. The smartest people on earth are attracted to chess, isn't it time that chess players made as much money as golfers and poker players? Even making as much as bowlers would be an improvement.
$11,515,939 Kamsky, Gata
$8,209,746 Nakamura, Hikaru
$5,721,710 Onischuk, Alexander
$4,854,191 Kaidanov, Gregory
$4,369,921 Ibragimov, Ildar
$4,281,573 Ehlvest, Jaan
$3,962,013 Shulman, Yury
$3,822,909 Christiansen, Larry M
$3,607,155 Ivanov, Alexander
$3,562,548 Gulko, Boris
$3,479,738 Akobian, Varuzhan
$3,330,086 Shabalov, Alexander
$3,253,341 Wojtkiewicz, Aleks
$3,249,136 Novikov, Igor
$3,241,887 Stripunsky, Alexander
$3,232,340 Benjamin, Joel
$3,099,576 Fishbein, Alexander
$2,937,725 Goldin, Alexander
$2,926,161 Becerra, Julio
$2,888,300 Yermolinsky, Alex
$2,830,046 Perelshteyn, Eugene
$2,672,538 Polgar, Zsuzsa
$2,658,779 Finegold, Benjamin P
$2,615,261 Dlugy, Maxim
$2,580,213 Kudrin, Sergey, Gm
$2,504,312 Dzindzichashvili, Roman
$2,461,482 De Firmian, Nick E
$2,457,329 Serper, Gregory
$2,391,432 Orlov, Georgi
$2,299,820 Gurevich, Dmitry
$2,236,455 Lakdawala, Cyrus F
$2,198,368 Sevillano, Enrico M
$2,197,370 Khachiyan, Melikset
$2,185,310 Kreiman, Boris
$2,171,928 Foygel, Igor
$2,163,415 Altounian, Levon
$2,135,908 Lapshun, Yury
$2,133,149 Friedel, Joshua E
$2,103,550 Duque, Raymond D
$2,074,329 Browne, Walter S
$2,050,068 Fedorowicz, John P
$2,043,018 Annakov, Babakuli, Gm
$2,014,829 Bradford, Joseph Mark
$2,004,474 Gonzalez, Renier
$1,993,851 Palatnik, Semion
$1,984,655 Schneider, Dmitry
$1,933,049 Zaitchik, Gennady
$1,888,568 Sher, Miron
$1,848,751 Milman, Lev
$1,827,574 Zatonskih, Anna
$1,819,547 Hjorth, Gregory
$1,811,311 Lombardy, William J
$1,796,441 Deng, Kong Liang
$1,773,039 Kedyk, Dmytro
$1,733,049 Tangborn, Eric K
$1,712,347 Volovich, Anatoly
$1,711,229 Stein, Alan R
$1,700,535 Florean, Andrei
$1,694,831 Muhammad, Stephen A
$1,692,799 Felecan, Florin
$1,664,541 Bercys, Salvijus
$1,619,816 Bhat, Vinay S
$1,608,057 Chumachenko, Andrey
$1,606,185 Peters, Jack
$1,606,082 Strugatsky, Vladimir
$1,556,577 Bartholomew, John D
$1,457,732 Fernandez, Daniel
$1,435,268 Rohde, Michael A
$1,416,109 Donaldson, W John
$1,404,783 Torman, Eric
$1,373,199 Pruess, David
$1,365,191 Schroer, Jonathan
$1,363,467 Nikolayev, Igor A
$1,352,487 Blocker, Calvin
$1,319,194 Brooks, Michael A
$1,308,104 Shahade, Greg
$1,303,494 Tate, Emory A, Jr
$1,284,694 Lugo, Blas
$1,271,061 Ippolito, Dean J
$1,258,087 Smith, Bryan G
$1,228,969 Krush, Irina
$1,204,597 Kriventsov, Stanislav G
$1,198,943 Mulyar, Michael
$1,187,903 Kalikshteyn, Alexander
$1,177,095 Regan, Kenneth W
$1,175,735 Zilberstein, Dmitry
$1,166,994 Schneider, Igor
$1,120,835 Lenderman, Alex
$1,115,364 Grefe, John A
$1,100,797 Hummel, Patrick A
$1,095,204 Mikhailuk, Slava
$1,091,690 Vigorito, David E
$1,087,506 Lopez, Bruci
$1,080,895 Milovanovic, Rade
$1,072,387 Burnett, Ronald W
$1,060,238 Hess, Robert L
$1,051,339 Winer, Steven M
$1,044,105 Vucic, Mladen
I couldn't find a ranking of players below 2400, but looking at the rating distribution list, I think the $100,000 per year cutoff would be around 2180. Close enough to the 2200 master cutoff. I doubt any of the above 100 would complain about their new income levels just from playing in tournaments :)
The above is not career earnings, it is just 2005 tournament earnings. So, exactly how big of a TV audience is needed to generate this sort of cashflow? Exciting final round at a major tournament draws 7 million to 8 million households tuning in. Ordinary tournaments more like 3 or 4 million households. My estimate is that there are currently around 10 million people that play chess at least once per year, but only a small percentage are USCF members. To pull in multimillion audiences, we need to tap into the casual chessplayer.
As interesting to some reading this that a theoretical opening battle in the Sicilian that is agreed to a draw by move 30 is, I guarantee that the casual chessplayer finds no excitement in that at all. Chess needs to become a sport with the usual drama and excitement. Every game needs to have a winner and a loser and most certainly every tournament needs to have a sole winner. Then and only then does chess have a chance to generate the multimillion audience. Additionally, all cheating must be eliminated. All TV sports have strict sanctions against cheating and as long as cheating is allowed, even with BAP, chess doesn't have a chance as a TV sport. I also think that while chess exhibitions could fill a niche, people want to see the best players play the game. Minor league games get little to no audience. Women's sports tend to get much smaller audiences because people know that very few of the players in women's leagues would make the men's teams. Now, when the women are the best in the world, the audiences are just as big for women's sports, eg. figure skating. So, people want to watch the best players on TV. They also want to watch the best players playing for something meaningful, be it a large prize fund, a prestigious title, etc.
If the chess community just modeled what works with the other TV sports, then I don't see any reason why we can't get at least some progress toward the tenfold cashflow boost. However, I cannot do this alone and I certainly can't do it if the very chessplayers that would benefit from this are the ones fighting me the most, to the point where they are actively spending time to minimize the chances that BAP will succeed. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but it would be nice if the people who think that BAP won't work didn't actively campaign against it. The first phase of my plan only affects masters financially, but the non-masters could end up with a weekly televised tournament. Jon, you don't have to play in any televised BAP tournaments or get any of the prize money or even watch the TV show. I am sure there will always be tournaments run using the 1867 point system that is your definition of chess. Would it really be that bad if I achieved what I outline here? Is BAP really your enemy that you are compelled to defeat? Why not think of BAP as a silly backward doubled pawn that has little chance of ever doing much and let it see if it can get promoted to a queen? I think BAP chess (since you insist on differentiating it from "real" chess) is close enough to real chess that you shouldn't mind if it was on TV and if the top 500 players made $100,000+ per year.
Clint
The first is the draw percentage. This is something that currently keeps going up the stronger the players get. As the draw percentage goes up, BAP does favor black more and more. So for the first key value, BAP is biased toward black and only gets worse as the playing strength goes up.
The second is the ratio of white wins to black wins. This is something that goes up the stronger the players get. However, as the ratio of white wins goes up with increasing strength, BAP biases toward white.
Since the two driving factors that determines if BAP is biased or not go in opposite directions as the playing strength goes up. The actual answer on whether BAP is biased for black can only be answered conditionally. The conditions are the specific values of the white to black win ratio and the draw percentage.
The following spreadsheet shows the biasing at the different combinations of the two key factors. Any cell with a value between 0.75 and 1.25 has biasing levels that are no worse than the 1867 point system. This combined with the opposite directions of biasing for the two key values is what convinced me that BAP has a good chance of actually reducing the biasing in the chess point system.
The critical values are the breakeven point at various draw percentages:
0% 1.2
5% 1.3
10% 1.3
15% 1.4
20% 1.5
25% 1.6
30% 1.7
35% 1.8
40% 2.0
So, if the draw percentage is 25% like I expect, as long as white wins 1.6 times or more for each black win, BAP is biased for black no more than 1867 is biased toward white. The results from the past BAP tournaments indicate 25% is a realistic draw percentage, though it could certainly come in a bit higher or lower. As far as the white win ratio being 1.6 or more, that is already the case for the top GM's and if my theory is correct about white giving up more draws that they should be, that means that the white win ratio should go up.
So, is BAP biased in favor of black? At the expert level it is, but that is because the draw rate is around 15% to 20%, but white doesn't win 40% more often than black. The play is too sloppy for the first move advantage to be nurtured into the full point. In spite of this the actual results at the GM Slugfest Qualifier had the 2100+ players get 55% of their BAP points as black and 45% as white. This is the exact level of biasing in reverse of the current point system for GM's.
The universal reaction to BAP is most kindly stated along the lines of "its most dubious provision, the zero-point White draw" with the instinctive conclusion that BAP must be biased in black's favor and to a much larger degree than the 1867 system is biased toward white. Even my BAP3 analysis based on existing games supports this instinct to an overwhelming degree. However, like the elasticity of price demand, lowering the price of something can dramatically chage the demand. Similarily raising the price can lower demand, so doubling the price of something will almost never double revenues, it could easily cut it in half.
Therefore, I would like to get people's predictions on the draw percentage and the white win ratio that they believe BAP would generate. I guarantee it won't be 55% draws, so what pair of key values do you think BAP will have and with those two numbers, you can look up what the biasing would be on Is BAP biased in favor of black?
Clint
The USCF will give a standard rating to a game played at a time control of 25 minutes with a 5 second increment just the same as they do a game played at 40 moves in 2 hours followed by an additional hour. We accept a lot of variation in our game and still call it "chess".
My biggest problem with Mr. Ballard's writings is his assumption that draws are the reason that chessplayers don't earn big money. I don't believe this to be the case. In covering a large tournament, a televising editor will be able to pick and choose which games to show or not, and after the round report the new standings. With regard to lots of short draws in the last round, that may be an issue, but there are two fixes.
First, the financial incentives are more at play here than the point system. Under current conditions, if these draws didn't result in equal payouts, we'd see more attempts to win (and use of existing tiebreaking systems is more appealing to my sense of fairness than an arbitrary change in point scoring). Moreover, if all of these players were making good livings and had to pay attention to keeping their television fan base, even under an equal payout system we'd probably see more fighting. When you don't make much money, the goal is to maximize the minimum that you receive.
The second fix is a penalty system for these short draws. Sound crazy? In some years the NBA has a problem where one team has already locked in the top spot for the playoffs with a few games left to go. These teams often want to play only the end of the bench and rest their stars. If the stars don't play, the fans get angry, so the NBA applies a financial penalty to the team for not really trying to win. Or look at tennis where top players get paid just to show up at smaller tournaments. They could just collect their money and not try for the win, but then they would stop being invited to such events. Why do chess tournaments keep inviting highly ranked players who have draw reputations?!
This of course brings us to the real problem with chess. There is no reputable body overseeing the game to (1) ensure competitive play, (2) attract corporate sponsors, and (3) market the game. This third point is very important. People usually root for players they like, as opposed to just enjoying the game. Leagues market their star players as much as they do the game. Players are required to participate in press conferences and other public events. Personalities are promoted and rivalies encouraged. Those of us who follow international chess today often do so for rational reasons, and we can appreciate a beautiful game played by two guys we never heard of. Most fans of other sports engage on an emotional level more than a rational level.
A governing body to not just oversee tournaments but establish a cycle/circuit exists in every sport. Where would golf be without the PGA? And tennis didn't have nearly its current popularity until the ATP (and then WTA) was organized.
As we look to increase the popularity of chess as a spectator sport, keep in mind a lot of the superficial elements. Most tournaments right now, even at higher levels, are often lacking in visual appeal. A governing body needs to establish standards for venues (as we see with the PGA, NBA, NHL, and so on). And time controls matter too. Most chess players want the longer (classical) games, but then we need to edit the length for TV (which might be just fine). But keep in mind how most people play chess. Everywhere I've been, when I see people in parks and town squares playing chess, it is usually blitz. Do sprinters want to watch marathons on TV? You need to give the fans what they want! Basketball purists were upset years ago when the NBA outlawed the zone defense, but the NBA knew that fans wanted one-on-one defense and high scoring games at the time.
The scoring system isn't the problem. Television comes along when there is sufficient consumer demand that advertisers would like to reach that audience. When a credible organization sets up a chess circuit and applies some basic sports marketing principles, we'll see chess on TV.
Essentially, Danny King would give the setting of the game (The Veteran Korchnoi vs. the Up and coming Newbie MOrozevich), explain a little about what transpired in the game, and then go to the live video of a time scramble in which he was commenting in real time. It worked nicely. Even friends of mine who don't know how to play chess found it intriguing.
Possibly a good comparison: there's one PGA tournament per year where they play using the Stableford scoring system. This is a system designed to produce aggressive play. Rather than just counting strokes, players get 5 points for eagles, 2 for birdies, -1 for bogies, -3 for double bogies and worse. Since the reward for a birdie is more than the penalty for a bogie, players are encouraged to take extra risks. I think this is regarded generally in golf as a bit of an oddball system, but they're still calling it golf.
Having said that, I think there would be some problems with rating games played under this system, because as far as I know the rating formula assumes the normal 0, 1/2, 1 values for the different outcomes. There was an example earlier of one player getting 6 draws, and another 5 losses and one win with black. These players would have the same tournament result, but the 6-draw player would have a much higher rating result. This is a bit like if in the golf example above, they were to give the tournament prize money based on Stableford scoring, but calculate the tournament's world ranking points based on the normal stroke-play scores for the event.
Clint, I admire your zeal, dedication, and intellect. As far as chess itself is concerned, I have devoted more than 40 years to understanding and competing at it, and have derived enormous personal satisfaction from it. Now I am at a stage in life where I hope to earn money from it as well (not prize money, obviously). Let's call this part the "small picture."
From this small-picture standpoint, I do not believe chess is at all "broken," and I would not like to see its rules change. Both as a matter of principle (aesthetically, I and many others -- primarily strong players, I suspect -- find the "Slugfest", chess-on-steroids version of the game championed by Clint actually inferior to normal chess), and in terms of my personal interests, I remain opposed to the spread of BAP.
But the big picture is entirely different. Clint's logic is unassailable. He also is to be admired for candidly stating (although it isn't in his posts here) that there is no assurance that chess could or will succeed as a mass-appeal, televised sport, even in the form he is using. He simply says that drastically reducing the draw percentage is a necessary condition -- but might not be a sufficient condition -- for chess to succeed on TV. Although I have my own ideas on that subject, I will nevertheless stipulate to accept Clint's assertion, since he very likely is more knowledgeable than I about sports marketing, public entertainment and the like.
So even though the hope of attracting millions of viewers and millions in advertising dollars to some eventual televised Slugfest chess tournament still looks like a "long-shot" to me (and probably even to Clint), upon reading Clint's comment, I can't help but be drawn in. Clint is one awesome salesman. The effort he is plowing into touting his system is backed up by plenty of thought and plenty of logic. And if his program realistically offers even a small chance of bringing multi-million dollar sponsors into chess, even if I still wouldn't consider it "real" chess, why complain?
That is the big picture. Clint, you've gone a long way toward convincing me that potential "big-picture" benefits from promoting BAP might be more important than the things I object to about it on principle. I'm sorry I insulted you earlier. And I'm having second thoughts about my having placed some obstacles in the way of continuing to get your tournaments USCF-rated. Even though my view of the purely chessboard issues has not changed, I found your appeal to me above, well, appealing. You're a good guy with a driving vision, and I'm coming to think you deserve a chance to realize it even though it conflicts with my own vision of what chess is and should be.
Back to marketing. bagalman's comments bring to mind thoughts I've seen expressed by another individual who's devoted huge amounts of time to thinking about how to market chess. I am referring to Jamie Duif Calvin, also known as "Duif." She has posted here as well as on other boards, although I haven't seen her name anywhere in the past month or three. I will let her know about this thread, and I hope she'll comment here.
You make a lot of good points and I agree with most of what you say. However, you are probably not surprised to find that I don't agree with your disagreement with some of my conclusions :)
On the TV editor theory, the last round draws are a showstopper problem. Remember the US Championship a few years back when there were a large number of players in contention? I tuned in to ICC 15 minutes after the round started, but I couldn't get the games to show up. It was strange, because I was expecting half a dozen great games. Only the Shabalov game was being shown. Then to my horror, I realized that all the other boards agreed to quick draws. This actually happened. Erik Anderson who had funded $250K for this wasn't very pleased. $250,000 and only Shabalov played for a win. I would guess that his opponent offered a draw, but thankfully Shabalov declined. Now, put on your TV editor hat. Your job is to create an edited tournament show, like they do for poker tournaments, of the above tournament with one small twist. Substitute someone who would have taken a draw for Shabalov. This is the biggest tournament of the year. Everyone will be watching, everyone. Gotta make it captivating as it sets the tone for the rest of the year. Oh, you just happened to get a brand new big money sponsor, so this is a make or break show. No pressure, just the normal TV production stuff.
First, edit out all of the boring stuff. Hmmmm...., did half the potential content just disappear? OK, leading up to the final round, everything is going good. Ah, but that last round that wasn't played... Rain delay? Yes! That's it, create some sort of hollywood ending. Some disaster happened to cancel the last round, but happily all the players were able to be rescued and they all went home happy with an equal share of the prize money. Wait! We need a champion. Who the heck won the championship? That's where the tiebreak system comes in!! We need to really dramatize the nuances of the different tiebreak systems so the audience really gets enthralled about how each player has it decided if he won or not. It would be too boring to just show who won, and since tiebreaks are universally based on how your opponents did, what matters are the performances of the people who weren't even in the running for the championship. Kind of like if the Yankees and Mets are playing the seventh game of the world series that they decided to not play and agree to a tie, we can determine who won the seventh game of the world series by whether the Mariners did better than whatever bad team the Mets beat up on. No, that won't make sense to the audience. People want the destiny of the championship determined by the game that is played and not some technicality, which a tiebreak system is.
What about a lotto approach? People like those ping-pong balls bouncing around. Yes! that's it, we can make it like the draft day lottery for the NBA. We put in ping pong balls with the different players in it and then we can have some pretty girl pick out a ball and just read off the winning player. It won't make sense, but there were a couple of really good earlier round games, so if we have some fancy special effects maybe it would fly?
Back to reality.
I know you did say that the last round draws "may be an issue" and it could very well kill the entire TV market for chess for a decade or more. That's a pretty big issue. I personally don't like tiebreak systems for the simple fact that it is determined by the last round performance of a previous opponent that doesn't have anything at stake. Talk about the potential for cheating. In sports, tiebreaks are fine for qualification into the playoffs but substituting tiebreaks for playing the game doesn't make sense if we can fix the game. As far as your characterization that BAP is "an arbitrary change in point scoring", did you make that comment before of after you read my posts on whether BAP is biased for black? If after, what is your estimate of the draw percentage with BAP and the ratio of white wins to black wins? How is BAP arbitrary? Of all the possible point systems that I could have used, I chose BAP based on its mathematical properties and it is most certainly not arbitrary.
Changing the point system does change the financial incentives and my assertion is that we won't get to where there are players who have a significant tv fan base without something like BAP. Hey, if there is an improvement to BAP, I will have no problems in adopting it, but I have not heard of anything that is as good as BAP yet. I like penalizing short draws, but now we create a problem that other sports have that chess doesn't, namely officiating being a big part of the game. It is impossible to define a "short draw" precisely, therefore it becomes subjective. What if it goes 99 moves and is just a confrontation-less trade off the pieces and move them back and forth along the way to boost the move count before making it official. Chess players are very smart and if it makes sense for both players to draw, they will find a way regardless of disincentives, bans, etc. I posted an article "Sofia rule is fundamentally flawed" on slugfest7.com. As to why the organizers of tournaments keep inviting back the draw happy top players, it is because it is very difficult to prove anybody ever agreed to a draw they shouldn't have. Chess players are very smart and most likely understand the game much better than the organizers and will be able to create a convincing draw that passes the draw penalty referee's scrutiny. Also, why patch up the problem with enforcement that is problematic when it can be avoided upfront. From what I have heard the local chessplayers say about BAP, it becomes illogical to want a draw, so they do their best to avoid drawing as white. However, nobody becomes reckless both due to not wanting to give up the big score to their opponent, rating points that would be lost and the simple human nature of not wanting to lose to anybody. Drawing is better on the psyche than losing, that alone assures that players won't be throwing draws away.
Your comment that chess is appealing to the its fans for "rational reasons" instead of emotional reasons is spot on. It also explains the microscopically small audiences chess has. I think there are about 5000 of these rational chess fans who regularly follow the live events on the servers. Just 1,000 times too small. I do agree that we need a governing body similar to the PGA, but what is the point of governing an unmarketable game? You might disagree with me that tournament chess is marketable, but I would like to see a rough script for the above mentioned scenario. I am not clever enough to be able to market that and make it appeal on an emotional level that is needed for big TV audiences.
Maybe the US Chess League can become the equivalent of the PGA? It is off to a good start, but team chess is different from individual chess. Like the Ryder Cup in golf, team play has a totally different dynamic and while it is still golf, making a team sport out of an individual sport is not what the fans want. Who were the best tennis doubles team of all time? Tennis fans can probably list off a lot of the top players from the past, but unless they are specifically a doubles fan, odds are they would only remember one of the doubles players that was also a top singles player. Chess is a game pitting one person (um, entity?) against another. People want to see the best players play the game.
I do agree that speed chess has a lot more visible players, but my guess is that there are not 3 million speed chess players around. As such, speed chess would be like a 3 on 3 half court basketball show. That is the type of basketball that seems to be the most commonly played. Sure, people will watch, but does anybody really care about 3 on 3 halfcourt basketball anywhere as much as the NBA? Also, there seem to be a lot more players playing "postal" chess, eg. chessworld.net that says it has over 300,000 members, than on ICC. Not sure if I believe the subscriber counts, but there seems to be a giant, but invisible, base of slow time control players.
Chess was on ESPN2. Then Kasparov sac'ed the exchange, Yasser got all excited about the possibilities and got the audience all ready for a grand finale. Then the disasterous draw offer and acceptance and chess on TV was setback at least a decade. Ask anyone who remembers that fiasco and see what their emotional response was. It is same as a rain delay canceling the game and it is called a tie. Can't avoid it when it is the weather, but did the players really just agree to stop playing? I never knew they could do that, seems pretty silly. Next time there is a chess game televised, odds are they won't bother.
You cannot market tic-tac-toe on TV, but you can market rock-paper-scissors. Don't laugh, this is for real. There is a rock-paper-scissors circuit, it is on tv. Chess isn't. There isn't a tic-tac-toe circuit on tv and you guessed the reason, the cat's game. Can't market drawn games on TV. Until every game has a winner and a loser, chess is doomed to be limited to 1/1000'th its potential size.
BAP is the minimal change that I know of that gives chess a chance. Still a small chance, but that is better than it's current zero chance. Speedchess appeals to more people due to its speed and decisiveness. The draw rate is much lower in speedchess. However, speedchess is too fast for the 5 million people, and people will find out that it is the equivalent to a long drive contest in golf, or homerun derby. Sure, once a year or so they will watch, but not weekly.
I estimate about 10 million people in the US play chess to some degree and it appeals to a similar demographic that golf appeals to. In order to market chess to the masses, any organization would need to be able to make changes that it sees fit to make it marketable. However, the reaction I have had to BAP indicates that the chess community does not want this to happen. I can count on one hand the number of people that have actively helped me beyond participating in my tournaments. It has taken almost a year for people to finally start thinking about BAP logically. The GM Slugfest will pretty much exhaust my personal funds that I can put into chess on TV and $100,000 of personal money is a big chunk of change for me. I had no illusions of a quick fix and estimated 5 years for BAP to get established as a viable alternative. At this point, all the BAP-haters can rejoice as without additional support, BAP will only exist in theoretical form after the GM Slugfest.
So, for anybody reading this who would like to have a chance at success with chess on TV, here are the requirements as I see them:
1. Every game must be decisive, eg. there needs to be a clear winner and a clear loser. BAP does this, there might be other ways, but BAP is really easy for the masses to understand with its 1, 2, 3 scoring. Its effect on tournament dynamics is very powerful.
2. Cheating must be exterminated, probably by lifetime bans of cheaters that is strictly enforced. I did not realize this was even an issue until the people who know made fun of me as one who had no clue about how things really worked. I have figured out how to detect the probability that a specific player is cheating, but it is a probability thing kind of like a rating system. Given the resources to develop this, I could create an rating that corresponds to the likelihood that a player cheats in a tournament. This is probably the only viable way to do this as short of a confession, it is nearly impossible to prove cheating and falsely labeling someone as a cheater has potential legal exposure. I am not a lawyer, but I don't imagine that calculating an "Honesty Rating" based on an objective algorithm applied to the moves played by all players and ranking players based on that does not seem to have any legal exposure. Publicly publishing this list will allow all organizers to make their own judgements about who can and cannot play in the "Open" section. I know there are tournaments that require a minimum rating for playing in an "Open" section, so maybe they can also have a minimum Honesty Rating that is also required.
Problem #2 was something that I was going to address after Problem #1 was solved. Disagree with me all you want, but at least I have a clear plan of achieving success on TV and solving two problems is not really a plan, those are just the two things that HAVE to be done before anything can really be started. The big money people are smart, they know this and there is no way that I, or anybody else, can convince big money sponsors to pump in big money before problems #1 and #2 are solved.
3. Stop the insanity of splitting prize money equally. Where is the drama in that? First place prizes must be at least DOUBLE second place prize and so forth down the line. Without this, there is not enough at stake to create drama. Preferably there is a sole prize to the clear winner. This happens for the Championships, eg. US, World, etc. It is not a money thing, it is the fact that there is a single winner. Splitting prize money creates multiple winners, but that contradicts the concept that the TV audience has about who the winner is. The winner is who came in first, if just by one thousandth of a second. It might be arbitrary at some purist level, but that is what TV audiences need. A clear winner.
4. Tournament pairing rules need to be updated from the 1895 approach. There is way too much arbitrariness in the current swiss format. Not only are incentives setup to encourage draws, all the players get a significant bias for or against them based on the extra color they get. Additionally, a single rating point difference totally changes the tournament for a player, eg. at the halfway point in the first round, one player plays the lowest ranked player of the tournament and the other player plays the highest ranked player. It then becomes expected that two players that are statistically indistinguishable to have totally different results after the first round. There is then no assurance that this divergence is somehow compensated for in future rounds and in fact such imbalances are added at each round, just to a smaller degree due to smaller groups of players with the same points, but then again the number of just imbalances keeps growing. I have not totally worked out a solution to this yet, but an "Elimination Swiss" is a promising start. That is where the first rounds pit top player that hasn't been pair yet to the bottom player. This way, the imbalance at the halfway point doesn't even matter, as you end up with the previous two players at the dividing line playing against each other, instead of one playing the top player and the other playing the bottom player. I have not done simulations of this, but it has the effect of verifying that nobody in the bottom half would have won a double round robin. Then if someone from the bottom half wins, they immediately have to prove it the next round by playing the top player. The road to the top leads through the top player. This also avoids pitting the top players against each other until the last rounds. I probably need to write software to do pairings so other TD's could use it, but so far I have not gotten a single request for this, so I haven't bothered to do it.
5. The above changes need to be applied to existing tournaments as much as possible. If it isn't, the made for TV event will have a "made for TV" flavor to it. The people will know that this is not how it is really done and that defeats the entire purpose. Unfortunately, my estimate of 5 years will probably have to be revised to 50 years based on what I have seen so far. I don't have the $10 million it will take to just make it happen and I don't expect anybody out there does either, so it extends the timeframe by an order of magnitude. Looking back historically, it probably took the same amount of time for en passant and such changes to become part of chess, so maybe it is not so bad.
6. Get the best players you can playing at tournament time controls. That is what the TV audience will want to see. Nothing else will do.
I imagine chess purists are totally outraged now by what has to be done to make chess into a TV sport, but that is my assessment. I am not myself a TV producer, but I work with people that are and have a fair amount of experience with TV advertising. I am not planning on making any money from any of this. All profits will just be reinvested into prize funds, promotions, etc. However, there is no danger of me profiting from any of this for those who are worried that I will be making money. For those who think that chess on TV will work without doing the above 6 things, I would certainly welcome a shorter, quicker, easier plan. Even with all of the above six things done, we are still not assured of success, but the odds get immensely better. I would say an even money bet, which is a lot better than zero chance. Without any one one of the above items in place, the chances are much reduced.
So, I am saying that the 1867 point system is wrong, the 1895 pairing system is wrong, the practice of splitting prize money is wrong, and cheating is wrong. I hope most people will now agree with more than one of these four assertions. Notice that none of these four change are big changes to chess itself and I feel will create a big boom in chess. I don't expect everybody to agree with me, but hopefully I will need to use my other hand to count my active supporters :)
Clint
TV outside the US is a mystery to me. My expertise is with US TV and my estimate of 10 million chess players, is for US chessplayers. Clearly, with the type of money from my hypothetical list, we will have all sorts of non-US players occupying the top spots in the USCF rating list. Can't assume a static top 100 list with such a dynamic change. It was just meant to illustrate the very real potential for the players that we all know (or are!) to make some real money.
How watchable would the Korchnoi-Morozevich game been if they had agreed to a draw at move 15 after 15 minutes of playing? Or even if things ended up in an interesting draw and the show ended?
If draws were not so pervasive, they can certainly be edited out, but with live TV you need to be prepared for anything that can happen to happen. Murphy's law and all that. If the odds of something bad happening are 50%+, what sane TV producer will put his name/job on the line with those sorts of chances?
TV audiences won't mind that black is considered the winner if the game ends in a draw, as long as that rule is clearly stated up front. TV audiences are ok with a ball hitting the foul pole being a homerun, so there is no problem with contradictory things :) [I always wondered why it wasn't called a "homerun pole", probably someone in 1874 first started calling it the foul pole and we have been stuck with it ever since]
Thanks for the reference to the Grandmaster Video series. It is clear that is it possible to make chess visually appealing on TV, that is the least of the problems as I have described above. To be truly successful as a TV sport, the best players need to play their competitive chess the same as what is on TV, otherwise it is a made for TV sports event.
Clint
My proposal is to use BAP only for pairing and prize money purposes. I would advocate BAP3 for rating purposes, but not quite yet as I only discovered it last night and it has not been validated yet. It is important for a rating system to be as accurate as possible and I don't want to propose anything that I am not fully confident in. The fact that BAP3 shows that Kasparov outscored his opponents by 2.87 times as white and by 3.41 times as black makes a lot more sense than what the 1867 point system says. It says that Kasparov was 2.73 times as good as his opponents as white, but only 1.6 times better than his opponents as black.
I don't know about you, but I don't think the amount that Kasparov is better than me by would change that much regardless of if he was playing white or black. Why should it change so much against GM's? BAP3 shows that Kasparov was about three times as good as his opponents with either color, instead of almost three times as good as white, but only about 50% better as black.
Now, the rating system is not very relevant to TV and I did not even put it on the list of things that need to be changed. BAP3 is therefore just a theoretical curiosity that shows how silly the current rating system is. I know people are very passionate about the rating system though, so if there is no need to mess with it, leave it alone is my philosophy.
I think all the major sports have a rating system that is independent from the prize allocation system, why not in chess too?
Clint
Thanks! I am nearly speechless. I only have one minor issue with your post and I really feel bad about even bringing it up after all the wonderful things you write about me.
I hope you don't mind, but in the spirit of accuracy, when you say "(aesthetically, I and many others -- primarily strong players, I suspect -- find the "Slugfest", chess-on-steroids version of the game championed by Clint actually inferior to normal chess)", I am wondering which BAP games you are refering to?
Have you actually seen any to be able to make such a conclusion valid? Contrary to people's assumptions, your superior form of chess is played in BAP tournaments too. Just like the inferior slugfest chess is played when the 1867 point system is in place, superior chess will live on under BAP. Now just because I sacrifice pieces in the vast majority of games I play, that's just me :) I do that under any point system, because I don't play for ratings or prize money, but I play for fun and to me the battle between material and non-material factors is the most fun.
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 d6 4. Nf3 Nxe4 5. d4 d5 6. Bd3 Bd6 7. O-O O-O 8. c4 c6 9. Nc3 Nxc3 10. bxc3 dxc4 11. Bxc4 Bf5 12. Re1 Nd7 13. Bg5 Qc7 14. Be7 Bxe7 15. Rxe7 Qd8 16. Re3 Nb6 17. Bb3 Nd5 18. Re5 Bg4 19. Bxd5 cxd5 20. Qb3 Bxf3 21. gxf3 b6 22. Rae1 Rc8 23. Rxd5 Qf6 24. c4 Qf4 25. Qd3 Rc6 26. Rde5 Rh6 27. d5 Qxh2+ 28. Kf1 Rg6 29. Qe3 Rg1+ *
Not sure if you would categorize this as a superior form of chess, but I wouldn't categorize it as a slugfest game. Yet, this is a 29 move draw in the Petroff that was played between two masters at the recent GM Slugfest Qualifier. Proof positive that contrary to people's expectations, positional games will live on under BAP. This is a positional game isn't it? Isolated pawns, doubled pawns, backward pawns and all that.
I am guessing that the 32 piece tablebase would have many paths that are very non-slugfest that will be to your aesthetic liking. There will also be slugfest paths to to victory also. There is no invalid way of winning a chess game, and winning is what matters. To each their own, chess certainly allows that. BAP only reinforces this. I claim that it enhances whatever style a player has, so positional players will need to play even more positionally to do well. Basically, BAP forces players to play their strongest chess, every game. If they are positional players, then BAP will force them to become better positional players.
Now, a "positional" player that cannot play a tactical game is not a very good positional player, especially since the whole point of positional play is to maximize the chance of happy tactics down the road. Similarily a tactical player that cannot play a positional game is not a very good tactical player, as it is no good to be able to see all the ways your opponent will tactically win from a superior position.
Chess seems to currently be artificially split between the positional camp and the tactical camp. You know what I mean. I personally feel that the truth of the matter (32 piece tablebase) is that both paths are valid and whether a greater percentage of paths are slugfest paths or positional paths is not really relevant, as both will have significant (double digit percentage) share of paths to victory. I do have a hunch that your superior chess will actually have more overall paths to victory than slugfest paths, hence I am not totally joking when I call it superior chess, superior as in having more numbers behind it, eg. "4. greater in quantity or amount: superior numbers.", the enemy had a superior army but was defeated by an unexpected tactical blow :)
Separately, I am working on Chess Physics that provides a unified theory on correct chess play that does not differentiate between opening, middlegame, endgame, open, closed, semi-open, positional, tactical, etc. I feel that there is a single unifying way of playing chess that works in all situations. No need for any memorization of openings, never ending study of endgame details, just a single unifying chess physics that allows one to pick the best move in any position.
Clint
I admit this is more my gut feeling, based on emotion and intuition, not scientific examination. In fact I haven't replayed any games from any of your Slugfest tournaments. The only example of the style I looked at was your own crucial game against Michael Aigner from the U.S. Open (which of course wasn't even a Slugfest tournament).
Simply put, in the general case, I have never seen a drawn outcome as either any less honorable or any less aesthetically pleasing, than a decisive outcome.
Now you've convinced me that marketability is a whole other story -- draws (at least 50% draws) might very well be a killer. But speaking from what I referred to in my previous post as the "small-picture" viewpoint, I have no problem at all with draws. Yes some GMs sometimes do hang it up and go home when they could (should?) play on. But since I am and always will be a player not a fan, I could care less what the pros do (except when they cheat).
That is the negative side of my point: I personally see no aesthetic or principled reason for discouraging drawn outcomes.
Now the positive side. Because I appreciate and admire the full range of skills employed in chess -- encompassing everything from creative originality to rote technique -- I find a brilliant defensive effort that succeeds in holding the half-point, no less pleasing than a brilliant sacrificial attack such as your "Ballardsov" opening seems designed to deliver.
So, redefining the objectives of chess in a way that would deny a successful defender any reward for his demanding artistry (beyond depriving his opponent of one or two wall-chart points), strikes me as not a change for the better.
Not only would such a result be unfair and frustrating in my view. I think it would also discourage the type of play, and even the type of study, that might make such defensive brilliancies possible.
If a player who pulled off such a defensive brilliancy with the White pieces got 0 point, who would value that particular game? The player himself probably wouldn't; nor would his opponent. So it's hard to see an author or publisher making a big deal about such a game either. That is really what is at stake in your comment about the relative merits and relative prevalence (in BAP vs. non-BAP chess) of "superior" vs. "Slugfest" chess styles.
I also believe that downgrading EVERY drawn outcome as BAP does, would have other potential unfortunate effects on both the practice and the appreciation of the chess art.
For instance, you state above that BAP does not force "positional players" to change their styles; to oversimplify, it wouldn't force Karpov to impersonate Clint Ballard. It just forces "positional" players to be even better positional players, in order to bring home the win.
I don't really think so. BAP critically alters the balance between risk and reward within every individual chess game. As a financial analyst, I am keenly aware that the potential reward from any endeavor should always be gauged against the (properly quantified) level of risk.
Now, what I think defines a "positional" player like Karpov or Andersson, is neither technical superiority per se, nor any lack of tactical facility (as you correctly pointed out). Rather, it is the finely honed propensity to MINIMIZE RISK in the process of attaining and exploiting advantages. This is really the optimal way of differentiating Karpov or Kramnik's style from that of, say, Judit Polgar or Hikaru Nakamura.
You may denigrate this quality as overvaluing the role of "always having the draw in hand." (N.B. Contrary to what you stated elsewhere, White does NOT "always have the draw in hand" throughout a game -- only for the first 10-15 moves, assuming near-equal, GM-strength opponents; and not always even then.) But to me, again perhaps colored by my financial-market training, a prudent risk-taking kind of approach appears not cowardly or dull, but prudent. You probe, you advance, you throw your weight around ...but not so much weight that you over-commit, lose your balance, and thereby take more risk than needed in the effort to win.
That is my understanding of the essence of chess skill and chess artistry as it's evolved over the past 150 years or so. I would not want to see it change to place greater emphasis on "fireworks" and less (or no) emphasis on the management of risk and the prudent nurturing of small advantages. For those who require fireworks to get excited, there is already Shogi.
Finally, as Dennis pointed out earlier, there are plenty of draws that come about through brilliant combinative fireworks. I see no logic in penalizing players in those cases.
Rather than give one of the many famous instances, I will conclude by presenting an obscure one, which might soon gain at least 15 minutes of fame:
1.e4 c5 2.d3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 4.Nc3 Qd7 5.Be3 e5 6.f4 exf4 7.Bxf4 Be7 8.Nf3 Nf6 9.Qd2 0-0 10.0-0-0 Nc6 11.Ne5 Nxe5 12.Bxe5 b5 13.Qg5 Ne8 14.Qg3 f6 15.Bf4 b4 16.Ne4 Qd5 17.b3 f5 18.Ng5 Qd4 19.Re1 Bf6 20.Be5 Qd8 21.Nf3 Bb7 22.d4 cxd4 23.Bc4+ Kh8 24.Nxd4 Bh4 25.Ne6 Bxg3 26.hxg3 Nf6 27.Nxd8 Rxd8 28.Rh4 h6 ... eventually drawn around move 50. (By then White was up 2 queens but playing an SD time control with an analog clock, had to offer a draw because he couldn't distinguish from the clock-face whether he had 5 seconds left in which to reach checkmate, or 25 seconds.)
Had Black chosen to preserve his Queen on move 26, the proper result would still have been a draw. Readers may enjoy working out the details for themselves.
I think we are finding a large amount of common ground in how we see things. The differences that remain appear to be our opinion on what should be done.
I have some games that I have lost that I am actually proud of, but maybe that is me. When all is said and done, if a player cannot obtain satisfaction from a game that is well played if the scoresheet has a "0" on it, then I admit BAP would be a bad thing for that player. However, if a player can be proud of how he played win, loss or draw, then the point system used doesn't matter.
More specifically, if we are talking about aesthetic appreciation of games, that should be independent of rating points, tournament results, score of game, etc. shouldn't it?
BAP does not minimize the value of a white draw. Overall, it has a 2pt effect. BAP does boost the value of a white win by 50% and a black draw by 50%, so from that basis a 33% devaluation for a white draw can be inferred. However, the same 33% devaluation also applies to a black win. So white has one of his outcomes boosted by 50% and one devalued by 33%. Black has the same boost by 50% and devalue by 33%, just on different outcomes.
BAP does not punish being prudent, but as you wrote, white does have an opening advantage, so for white to lose that and get attacked by black means that white lost the first move advantage. BAP will actually increase the number of fantastically interesting draws though, so if that is what you want to preserve, you should have no worries.
In any event, there is no danger that BAP will be more than 1% (or maybe 0.01%) of chess played. Your form of prudent chess is in no danger of ever being supplanted.
I think what we are having is the AL vs. NL debate baseball has. Pitcher's duels vs. homerun oriented teams. Designated hitter vs. making the pitcher hit. The homerun brings in the audience, but requires changing a tradition that goes back to the 1800's. Hey, maybe someday we could have a chess World Series where the champion of Slugfest Chess goes up against the champion of Prudent Chess!
Then if we can agree that winning is really what is important, we can see what style is better. In a match situation it is unlikely, but possible that the winner according to BAP would be different than the winner according to 1867. I would recommend that they play on until one player achieves both a +4 1867 score and a +8 BAP score. That way, there is no debate as to who was the better player. If +4/+8 is too long, just reduce it to +2/+4, etc.
Clint
Slugfest Pairings
Clint