[Retros] Fairy retros

[afretro]

Dear Per,
Thank you for the point you have raised. For about one hundred years there were few SPGs and few fairy retros, so the tradition of including them among orthodox retros appeared to be quite natural. Then followed a boom of non-orthodox retros (SPGs, retros with stipulations affecting retroplay like “Minimal number of moves by the black king?,” and fairy retros). A debate as to the expediency of including them under one heading would be of purely academic importance, if it were not for the issue of tourney judgment. By now, hundreds of fairy rules and pieces have been proposed and many of them make it relatively easy to break orthodox retro records; moreover, new types can be invented specifically for the sake of achieving new records; these easily achieved records may impress judges much more than outstanding orthodox retros with long and complicated solutions. Kornilov and I wrote a couple of articles touching in particular on this subject (feenschach Heft 154 (2004) and Heft 160 (2005)). In our view, allowing fairy retros to compete side by side with traditional ones is like allowing a motorcyclist to compete with a runner. If chess composition continues to be a “competition sport,” I hope that someday SPGs and fairy retros will be separated from orthodox retros. By the way, there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of new orthodox retros published throughout the world in the past decade.
Yours,
Andrey