[blind-chess] Revising Help Rules
- From: "R Dinger" <rrdinger@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "chess" <blind-chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2010 11:37:09 -0700
Hi All,
Because of the correspondence chess tradition of using print reference
materials, this could be a difficult rule change.
For many years correspondence chess players used books and their own past games
as references when playing. I think this was used mostly to get the first few
moves of a specific opening correct, but studying your own previous games could
sometimes help avoid common pitfalls as well. The whole notion of references
was not much of an issue, though, because manually searching through piles of
written material took too much time.
Now with the introduction of personal computers and the availability of low
cost databases of literally millions of games, the problem landscape has
changed dramatically. As Johannes correctly points out, the better researcher
has an advantage over his opponent no matter the opponent's chess skill.
Some chess game databases allow you to just enter your FEN position and the
software tells you what the best next move is based on the millions of master
level games in the database. You don't even need to enter the moves, just the
current position. And someone told me recently that some databases don't even
need the exact FEN they will find the closest ones. But is that really playing
chess or just running some software. To me it seems a little like entering a
marathon race and showing up to compete on a bicycle.
So where do we on the blind chess list want to draw the line?
Clearly using a chess engine or discussing your game with the local chess Grand
Master that is giving you chess lessons is out. And maybe looking up your
first few moves in the ECO in order to find the name and number of the opening
could probably be allowed. But what about the rest of it?
Nothing is really enforceable, though, and we must rely on the honor system. I
will make the rule whatever appears to be the general consensus of the blind
chess members. So far I think the idea of absolutely no help seems to be
winning.
Some more ideas you might consider:
* Keeping the current rules.
* Limit to written articles and books only, like ECo or articles on a specific
opening.
* You must inform your opponent of any reference you use and furnish your
opponent a copy.
* No game databases or any published historical games.
* No chess software at all, like engines or databases like chess base.
* No opening advisor sites or automated opening software.
* Absolutely nothing but your own memory.
Any more ideas or additional comments?
Richard
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