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Aberg variation of Capablanca's Chess. Different setup and castling rules. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝Hans Aberg wrote on Fri, Apr 25, 2008 05:38 PM UTC:

H.G.Muller:
| But it is still not clear to me that a Human would not suffer as bad
| from [increasing the average number of moves].

This is clearly the difficulty.

| Furthermore, computers are not really totally ignorant on strategical
| matters either. But they cannot found by search, and must be programmed
| in the evaluation.

The strength in orthodox chess derives much from implementing human heuristics. So if the game is changeable or rich in this respect, it will be more difficult for computers.

| So it would also depend on the difficulty to recgnize the
| strategical patterns for a computer as opposed to a Human.

Computers have difficulty in understanding that certain positions are generally toast. They make up by being very good at defending themselves, so a good program can hold up positions that to humans may look undefendable. So a either a variant should have better convergence between empirical reasoning and practice, or one should let the humans have access to a cmoputer that do combinatorial checking.

| And until the game strongly simplifies, the main strategic goal is
| usually to gain material, using piece values as an objective.

That seems optimistic :-). A GM advice for becoming good in learning end-games.

| Unless the opponent really ignores his King safety. Then the 
| strategic goal will become to start a mating attack.

There are all sorts of tactics possible.

One thing one can try against a computer program is giving it material in exchange for initiative. Then, the human may need some assistance on the combinatorial side.

If the game is highly combinatorial the computer is favored. So one can try to close it.

So a chess variant should admit stalling. If it is always possible to break into highly combinatorial positions, then the computer will be favored.