[Retros] Ch5: Place of the Retro Logics

[Kevin Begley]

Guus,

>"*Once upon a time in the future, you will receive a message from an
authoritive WFCC body announcing a few changes to the problem
presentations...*"

By far, your best post on the subject... to date... and some of your early
posts were fantastic reading!

This one reads positively Orwellian (!!) ... with a strong underlying
current of undeniable Truth to be found in your every sarcastic prophesy.
Brilliant!!  You have allowed the audience to experience both the horror
and the ominous certainty of a tragic future.

I absolutely love the way in which you have rolled out the anticipation for
your coming proposals...

Kevin.





On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 11:42 AM, Guus Rol <grol33 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Retro-friends,
>
> Once upon a time in the future, you will receive a message from an
> authoritive WFCC body announcing a few changes to the problem
> presentations. It is subdivided into the following items:
>
> 1. As of today, we will no longer tell the solver what kind of mating
> problem he is solving, direct mate, helpmate, selfmate or reflexmate.
>
> 2. He is to assume it is a direct mate in most cases
>
> 3. But he must make an exception if the white units on the board are
> overwhelmingly outnumbered by black units, in which case he should assume
> it is a helpmate.
>
> 4. If on the other hand the blacks are overwhelmingly outnumbered by the
> whites and direct mate is too easy, you should take it as a selfmate.
>
> 5. In all other cases the author should provide the correct stipulation
> being "reflex mate" or another form of mate.
>
> 6. These new conventions have been carefully prepared by former members of
> the Codex committee for "retro conventions".and we welcome them in our
> midst.
>
> I guess you will not only find this extremely strange but also completely
> unncessary and unfruitful. To save a few cents in printing ink or a few
> bytes in a digital document (stipulations will be shorter), the independent
> status of basic "goal logics" has been compromised by mixing them up in
> positional evaluations. A worse crime to transparency is hard to imagine.
>
> The direct-, help-, self- and relex-forms are required logics in
> traditional problem solving to complement the primary commands such as
> "mate in 2" or "stalemate in 5".It is of course OK to nominate the
> direct-form (or any other form) as a default but this requires no reference
> to external factors such as board positions. It is unimaginable that the
> problem solving community would accept the potpourri created by the points
> 1 - 6.
>
> The role of the global retro logics - mainly pRA, RS, AP and RV (as a
> "rest" group) - in relation to retro problems is roughly the same as the
> role of direct- help- self- and reflex- logics in relation to traditional
> chess problems. They all provide "justifications" for accepting proposed
> solutions to problems. Examples: You can present 1 mating variation to
> satisfy a helpmate problem but the same variation will never count as a
> full solution to a direct mate. You can present a solution with an unproven
> e.p. capture which is OK in AP-logic but not in the other logics. You can
> present a solution where white castles to prevent black doing the same
> (RS-logic) but this would only be half a solution under pRA.
>
> The common components of a retro-active problem are: Diagram, playing
> rules, basic retro conventions, retro logics, goal logics, remainder
> stipulation.For some unknown reason the retro logics have been.mixed into
> positional evaluation in the same way the goal logics were mixed up with
> board positions in the points 1 - 6 which started this post. The mixup is
> worse than it seems since (a) it makes people believe you actually should
> resolve certain positions through a certain logic where at best the
> applicable logic should be a default value (b) it totally ignores the
> logical effects created by 3R ad 50M. You may not like these effects but
> they are nevertheless completely real. I again refer to my R309 in PB which
> is a good example for almost everything.(c) The beautiful vague term RV
> with a potential to cover the forgotten and unprivileged states was removed
> from the retro-vocabulary; how would you now sell a reflex-mate problem
> where "castling right" provides one solution and "no castling right"
> another? Oh, and I refuse to mention SPRA (d) it obscures the powerful
> archetypal and independent nature of the retro logics.
>
> The whole program was delivered under the pretext that it covered most or
> all interesting problems found in the retro field. To my knowledge, the
> purpose of problem rules and conventions is not to cover what is already
> there but to make space for creativity and innovation. The cause of all
> this, I believe, is the "scarcity of retro-active issues in orthodox chess"
> which gives an excuse for treating it on a case by case basis. If such an
> approach were continued for retro-activity in fairy problems, the Codex
> committee would produce tons of digital paper for all its different cases!
>
> The meta-concept at stake here is the "Power of Orthogonality".When
> breaking a subject into individual components one would like to assure
> maximum combinatorial capability as this delivers maximum freedom of
> action. E..g. you wouldn't have an arithmetic that only adds numbers
> without the digit "3" in them. With the retro components listed a few
> paragraphs ago this means ideally the freedom to combine Any diagram with
> Any playing rules (plus connected basic conventions) with Any retro logic
> with Any goal logic and with Any remaining stipulation. I know of quite a
> few reasons why that ideal cannot be attained but straightjacketing the
> retro logics as in the current Codex, is not one of them.
>
> Best wishes, Guus Rol.
>
>
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