[Retros] rights & ocassions /answering Andrew

[raosorio at fibertel.com.ar]

Hi Andrew,

Long time without these "sex of the angels" discussions.


I hope you find the MatPlus discussion useful. To my mind, it was 
conclusive, and filled the key hole in the following strategy
*********************************************************************
I find it useful indeed. I'm affraid I did not read it carefully enough to
realyze that conclusive side.


For example the chess programming community have converged on a 
standard set of rules to judge any engine, and this community agrees with 
the arbiters as to how to work castling and en passant in the context of 50M 
& 3Rep.
*********************************************************************
this is really new for me. Could you please indicate where to find this standard
set of rules? All of the present discussion should start from there.


There is a Golden Principle in this, that conventions *only* come in to 
remove areas of ambiguity where we cannot deduce using information in the 
stipulation and logic what must have happened. Any convention which does not 
respect the Golden Principle is worded in too strong a way, and must be 
toned down because it's taking us into Fairy Chess.
*********************************************************************
Simple and common sense. 

I think the codex writers had a better lunch, with more wine, than the 
laws writers.
********************************************************************
Yes, but I suspect it was at the same restaurant.

Best wishes,
Roberto



Hi Roberto, 

I hope you find the MatPlus discussion useful. To my mind, it was 
conclusive, and filled the key hole in the following strategy. 

There may be always fun ways to interpret wordings of rules. But there is 
surely a vanilla set of rules which is how they are intended to be. This 
intention is not so difficult to discern, because the rules of chess are so 
simple. For example the chess programming community have converged on a 
standard set of rules to judge any engine, and this community agrees with 
the arbiters as to how to work castling and en passant in the context of 50M 
& 3Rep. I agree with this general interpretation. This allows us to play 
chess unambiguously. This programming interpretation incidentally bounds the 
scope of chess: it excludes touch move, the clock, responses to errors etc. 
Basic robust vanilla chess. 

Now, and only now, do problemists come into the discussion. There is a 
minimal set of conventions which is then needed to make the transfer from 
vanilla game to problem. These fall into two areas: 
(1) history. Just looking at a diagram is not sufficient to see what moves 
may be legal, due to who's move, castling, ep, number of times position has 
repeated, number of moves since last . We have now reasonably comprehensive 
understanding of how conventions will work in this area. 
(2) decision-making. what can players do? stipulation type (#, h#, s#...) 
gives a lot of information, but also decisions about whether draws of 
various kinds would be proposed or rejected. 
There is a Golden Principle in this, that conventions *only* come in to 
remove areas of ambiguity where we cannot deduce using information in the 
stipulation and logic what must have happened. Any convention which does not 
respect the Golden Principle is worded in too strong a way, and must be 
toned down because it's taking us into Fairy Chess. 

A few random remarks to finish... 
- I remember encountering Sergio Orce in the old days in france-echecs.com. 
I hope he is well, wherever he is. 
- I think the codex writers had a better lunch, with more wine, than the 
laws writers. 
- Actually, it's not a problem with the writing, but the subsequent editing. 
Nobel Laureate Ernest Hemingway said: "The first draft of anything is s**t." 

Thanks & all the best, 
Andrew.