[Retros] rights & ocassions /answering Andrew

[Guus Rol]

I know of 4 areas where "the sex of angels" is relevant: Religion, Art,
Mathematics and Chess - and of course "dwarf tossing" but I'd hate to
discuss something off topic here.

All of them allow unrestricted optons for creation and may assign relevance
at will. The reason that discussions on issues like these do not progress
is, like in politics and economics, not the esoteric nature of "angel sex"
but the misidentification of underlying archetypal principles.

It is a good idea to formulate some of these principles as "meta-rules":

1. The golden principle regarding conventions is correct but incomplete. A
second principle on conventions is that they may replace "human
interaction" in a chess game by an "automatum". Getting an automatic draw
after the 2e position repetition is not necessary to fill an information
hole but it helps in eliminating the human factor which feels uneasy in the
world of chess composition. Some chess game services on the Internet will
declare a draw on the 2e repetition even when none of the players claimed
it.

2. The meta rule that will lift the dinosauric retro community out of the
20th century into the 21st one is this one: Retro-active situations are too
scarce in orthodox chess to yield non-incidental, generic conventions; only
by impact analysis on the fairy varieties, the true nature of
retro-conditions and retro-conventions can be learned. Asimov wrote his,
then revolutionary, Foundation trilogy where civilization on earth
(orthodox chess) was revitalized by its former colonies (Fairies) in the
Galaxy. Could this also apply to retro-chess?

I have published a number of fairy retro-problems illustrating the second
point. Two examples:

A. Recently a problem in "Warp chess" showing the interaction between
"repetition" and "castling". The sex of the angels proves most decisive
here!

B. Another one shows the special role of the King in castling in Circe
chess. In simplified form it corresponds to this situation: Black king on
e8, no rooks on a8, h8. Black plays Ke7, Ke8, Ke7, Ke8. If white repeats
moves as well, is this a draw? Answer generally No! As long as there is a
black rook or black pawn anywhere on the board, chances are that a rook is
resurrected on a8/h8. Blacks Ke7 destroys the opportunity forever and
justifies the verdict that the rights in the diagram are different from
those after 4 moves. Do you really want to follow the dynamics of being
able to actually resurrect a rook before deciding "castling rights" in the
diagram? The obvious way to go is static: as long as there is a black pawn
or black rook on the board, the sequence given is not a draw.

The discussion on e.p. rights can be enlighted by a similar pattern. Assume
a fairy variation where e.p. rights remain until another pawn move is made
by either side (quite attractive for composers by the way). Do you wish to
evaluate the existence of those e.p. rights by looking into the future? I
think not. It is quite incidental that future analysis is trivial under the
current e.p. rule. On a grander (fairy) scale one can see that granting
rights on future lines is, in general, not an attractive approach.

What is true for the rules and conventions, is even more true for the retro
logics. Only studying them with the fairies delivers effective insights. In
orthodox chess, everyone is hypnotized by a few "specials", the big picture
can never emerge. Since the logics have issues of their own besides
requiring unambiguous rules and conventions, we still have many miles to go.

Guus Rol


On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 12:10 AM, <raosorio at fibertel.com.ar> wrote:


> 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.

>

>

>

>

>

>

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