Expect a boom in FRC

[lkaufman]

Now that Hikaru Nakamura has won the official FIDE World Fischer Random (960) Chess Championship, I think we can expect a boom in popularity for it due to his immense popularity as a streamer. Surely he will be identified in many places as the FRC World Champion, which will constantly lead to people inquiring "what is Fischer Random chess"? Presumably he will speak very favorably of the game. Furthermore the games were in general very interesting and exciting, much more so on average than Classical chess games at top level due to minimal opening prep.

So what does this mean for us in the computer chess community? It may mean more FRC rating lists and tournaments. But we still have the problem that at long time controls and many threads, the draw percentage between top engines is huge, between 98 and 99% in the last such CCC final. Chess 324 solves the draw problem pretty well, but it isn't strictly speaking a subset of FRC due to not requiring symmetry. One solution that has been mentioned here is to select just the N most unbalanced FRC positions for engine competition, which should at least be less drawish in general. Perhaps others can suggest ways to hold FRC events or rating lists that wouldn't see 98%+ draws at top level. There is now much more reason to look for such ideas than there was before today.

[pohl4711]

So what does this mean for us in the computer chess community? It may mean more FRC rating lists and tournaments. But we still have the problem that at long time controls and many threads, the draw percentage between top engines is huge, between 98 and 99% in the last such CCC final. Chess 324 solves the draw problem pretty well,

My unbalanced Chess324 openings solve the problem. The original chess324 set does not. It is
a) way too small (324 openings, only)
b) very drawish, too

look at my testing results:
https://www.sp-cc.de/anti-draw-openings.htm


Normal FRC (in computerchess) has the same problem, that the original Chess324 has:
a) way too small (960 openings, only)
b) very drawish

[Modern Times]

Now that Hikaru Nakamura has won the official FIDE World Fischer Random (960) Chess Championship, I think we can expect a boom in popularity for it due to his immense popularity as a streamer.

Yes I think so, and that is great news. I've been a fan of it for many years, and I since I started the CCRL FRC blitz ratings list I've run close to half a million computer chess games of it. There has also recently been almost an explosion of engine authors are adding support for it. It has real momentum, and rightly so. Far more exciting to watch than conventional chess in my opinion, and great to see the engines having to think right from the first move. I've given up all ratings list work now but fortunately Basti in our group has now taken it on.

The draw "problem" only really exists amongst the very top engines. Plenty of action still a little bit further down. I guess there is potential for someone to create a new list that uses openings of some sort less likely to be drawn. It would certainly be interesting and great to see but on the other hand, I see no compelling need for it.

[bastiball]

I expect one day there will be FRC opening books theory and name of the opening of every position in FRC. Later on would be used for the engine tournament and for the testers.

[lkaufman]

So what does this mean for us in the computer chess community? It may mean more FRC rating lists and tournaments. But we still have the problem that at long time controls and many threads, the draw percentage between top engines is huge, between 98 and 99% in the last such CCC final. Chess 324 solves the draw problem pretty well,

My unbalanced Chess324 openings solve the problem. The original chess324 set does not. It is
a) way too small (324 openings, only)
b) very drawish, too

look at my testing results:
https://www.sp-cc.de/anti-draw-openings.htm


Normal FRC (in computerchess) has the same problem, that the original Chess324 has:
a) way too small (960 openings, only)
b) very drawish

My recollection from the CCC tournaments is that the percentage of decisive games in Chess324 was over ten times as large as for chess960. Still more draws than we'd like, but at least it is playable between top engines for tournaments or rating lists. The number of positions, which allow for 648 game matches, is quite sufficient for all tournaments and rating lists, we just need your giant sets for actual engine development where 50,000 game matches are often played, so I do appreciate your excellent work. But for a tournament or normal rating list, it is better to start with the same position that humans would be starting from, otherwise it is a rating list for a different variant. For humans, randomizing either the opening position or the opening moves is sufficient, no need to randomize both.

[lkaufman]

I expect one day there will be FRC opening books theory and name of the opening of every position in FRC. Later on would be used for the engine tournament and for the testers.

I don't doubt that FRC opening theory will develop, but why would we ever need to use it for engine tournaments or testing, when there are already 1920 different ways to start the game (with color reversal)?

[CornfedForever]

I expect one day there will be FRC opening books theory and name of the opening of every position in FRC. Later on would be used for the engine tournament and for the testers.

I don't doubt that FRC opening theory will develop, but why would we ever need to use it for engine tournaments or testing, when there are already 1920 different ways to start the game (with color reversal)?

Not sure how one 'quantifies' a ''boom".
However one would measure it, I think it will be short lived. Part of the joy in chess are the openings themselves...and the patterns one learns and step by step gets better at and even then it is 'hard enough' for most people. Engines...different matter I guess.

What we saw with the recent tournament was someone willing to throw enough money at it that top players who always seem willing to follow.

As an aside...it seemed like 'half' the players in this final were seeded by FIDE or federations or because of their 'standard ranking'. Just...wrong.

[bastiball]

I expect one day there will be FRC opening books theory and name of the opening of every position in FRC. Later on would be used for the engine tournament and for the testers.

I don't doubt that FRC opening theory will develop, but why would we ever need to use it for engine tournaments or testing, when there are already 1920 different ways to start the game (with color reversal)?

You're right but I mean there will be a point where like using frc opening like in standard chess to develop openings and and to create new theories and so on

[Chessqueen]

I expect one day there will be FRC opening books theory and name of the opening of every position in FRC. Later on would be used for the engine tournament and for the testers.

I don't doubt that FRC opening theory will develop, but why would we ever need to use it for engine tournaments or testing, when there are already 1920 different ways to start the game (with color reversal)?

Bobby Fisher initial intention was to get rid of Opening memorization, and what a coincidence that 50 years later there would be a final Match between an American vs a Russian playing for FIDE World FRC Championship