A NEW TWIST ON AN OLD GAME

CHESS has been with us for many centuries. Can the game be improved with new rules?

Perhaps the most famous chess position in history-- Paul Morphy's short-handed checkmate in the "Night at the Opera Game," Paris, 1858. Many chess buffs can repeat all of its moves from memory.

Let's skip right to my big reveal-- I've come up with a new chess variant that eliminates the need for mass memorization of opening lines. I've dubbed this version of chess JOCKEYCHESS, as the players essentially "jockey" for the opening position prior to the actual start of play. The MENSA BULLETIN just published my article about it, and Webmistress WinH. & I put together a basic website to explain the development of this game and its rules. (See JockeyChess.com.)

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The game of chess exercises and rewards a variety of mental skills-- calculation, visualization, pattern recognition, a sense of strategy and tactics... and especially memory, which all too often trumps everything else.

Oh, the memories... swashbuckling gambits with romantic names, well-worn lines of play sometimes ten moves long, or maybe even entire games, like Morphy's 17-move masterpiece above. But over the centuries the sheer volume of what we chess buffs strive to remember has expanded exponentially (especially with computer analysis) to a point of impossibility for all but the world's top chess minds.

Exponential Growth produces some starting numbers. For example, let's say you're taking a new job. When the discussion turns to salary, you propose that you be paid 1¢ for the first week, 2¢ for the second week, and then doubling your pay every week for the year. Your mathematically naïve boss laughs and says, "Sure!" The only sure thing is that he'll get fired, because your paycheck for the 52nd week would be $22.5 TRILLION (before taxes, of course). The number of possible chess positions grows with similar rapidity as a game progresses.

White has 20 possible opening moves, and Black has 20 possible immediate responses. Thus there are 400 possible positions after just one move by each side. After five moves each there are over 800,000, from nearly 70 trillion possible sequences. Neither the human brain nor any computer can contemplate every possibility that might arise. However, through centuries of play there has evolved a canon of tried-and-true pathways, often with exotic names reflecting the game's multi-national appeal-- the Spanish Game, the French Defense, the Scotch Game, the Sicilian Defense, the Danish Gambit, and dozens more.

Modern tournament-level games typically follow well-known pathways for the first few moves-- sometimes a dozen or more-- before entering novel territory, and one single sub-optimal deviation from that proven path can be fatal. This has an unfortunate consequence-- unless a player can instantly recall all possible variations in the first ten moves of, say, the Rimsky-Korsakov Doomsday Counter-Gambit Declined (not a real opening, but it sounds like one) then he or she might well lose to a lesser player who has a superior memory and/or has studied more.

Now, what if we could eliminate from chess the influence of rote memorization? This question has been asked multiple times by serious players over the preceding three centuries. There have been two main types of proposals-- a bigger board with more pieces, or a randomized set-up of the back-row pieces. The most widely accepted variant-- Fischer Random Chess, a.k.a. 960 Random-- was created by former FIDE World Chess Champion Grandmaster Robert "Bobby" Fischer and the Hungarian-born Polgar Sisters (Susan, Judit, and Sofia) in the 1970's. (See the detailed history of Fischer Random / Chess 960 HERE.)

With all due respect to Bobby Fischer and the Polgar sisters, I dare say I've arrived at an improvement over their invention-- I am calling it JockeyChess because the opposing players essentially "jockey" for the starting position by taking turns selecting the starting positions for the pieces. Here's how it works--

1. The board is set with just the pawns, lined up in the second and seventh ranks as normal.

a through h are the FILES, while 1 through 8 are the RANKS.

Each of the 64 squares thus has a unique letter/number combination.

2. BISHOPS

WHITE places a bishop on any of the first-rank squares EXCEPT the c-square and the f-square. (This guarantees that the completed starting position will NEVER be identical to that in classical chess.) WHITE has 6 options. BLACK matches WHITE’s placement on the eighth rank/same file with one of his bishops.

BLACK then places his second bishop on a different colored first-rank square than that of his first bishop to guarantee white-squared bishops and black-squared bishops. BLACK has 3 options. WHITE matches the second bishop placement.

3. KNIGHTS

BLACK places a knight on any available eighth-rank square. BLACK has 6 options. WHITE matches BLACK's knight placement, and then WHITE places the second knight on any available first-rank square. White has 5 options. BLACK matches the placement.

4. ROOKS

BLACK places a rook on any remaining eighth-rank square. BLACK has 4 options. WHITE matches. WHITE places the second rook on any remaining first-rank square. WHITE has 3 options. BLACK matches it.

At this point the math of the options is roughly equal—

White— 1/6 x 1/5 x 1/3 = 1/90

Black — 1/4 x 1/6 x 1/4 = 1/96

The board is left with two squares for the king and queen (the “royals”). And so to place the royals we turn to actual randomness... a simple coin flip works just fine, as would rolling a die or drawing a card from a deck consisting of only kings and queens.

THE FINAL MATH

90 (for white's options) x 96 (for black's options) x 2 (for the royals) = 17,280 possible opening positions; however, this number includes duplicate positions (because there are 2 bishops, 2 knights, and 2 rooks) resulting from the competitive/collaborative interplay of the two combatants. So after eliminating the duplicates we arrive at 2700 possible starting positions.

To review the JockeyChess selection sequence--

WHITE places a bishop on any square other than c1 or f1.

(Black matches.)

BLACK places the other bishop on any square the opposite color of the first bishop.

(White matches.)

BLACK places a knight on any available square.

(White matches.)

WHITE places the other knight on any available square.

(Black matches.)

BLACK places a rook on any available square.

(White matches.)

WHITE places the other rook on any available square.

(Black matches.)

A 50/50 random event (coin flip, draw of a card, rolled die, etc.) determines the placement of the queens on one of the two remaining squares. The kings are placed on the remaining squares. The board is now set for play.

WORTH NOTING--

JockeyChess is distinct from Fischer Random Chess/Chess960 in 3 important ways:

--Whereas the opening positions in Fischer Random Chess/Chess 960 are randomly imposed upon the players, the players of JockeyChess actively forge their own opening positions via "competitive collaboration."

--And whereas the option for castling is preserved in Fischer Random Chess/Chess960 by requiring the kings to be placed between the rooks in every starting position, there is no castling, per se, in JockeyChess; rather, JockeyChess affords the opportunity to either pre-position the kings in a protected corner OR to “castle by hand” in the course of regular play.

--Under the rules of Fischer Random Chess/Chess 960 it is possible (though extremely unlikely) that the random selection of the opening position might be the same as that in classical chess. (See position # 518.)

--And finally, the number 2,700 is simply way greater than 960, making it even less likely that specific lines of opening orthodoxy will ever be codified in JockeyChess. Then again, you never know-- someday some nano-plasma quantum super-computer might figure it all out and ruin it for us. Until then, we have a window for enjoying the randomness.

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MORE NOTES:

Here's the easiest way to randomize the position of the kings & queens on the remaining two squares-- roll a single die to produce a number from 1 to 6. An odd number-- 1, 3, or 5-- means than the white queen is placed on white's left-most open square. The black queen matches, and the kings take the remaining squares. An even number-- 2, 4, or 6-- means the opposite.

Might JockeyChess (or Fischer Random Chess/Chess960, or some other randomized variant) eventually replace classical chess in determining World Chess Champions? That might happen someday, but I think classical chess is a far better choice than randomized chess for rapid and blitz games. We'll likely never see another King's Gambit in a serious tournament under full-length time controls, but every now and then someone dusts one off in a speed game. Perhaps classical chess and randomized chess will become as distinct as sprints and distance running in track meets-- both involve running yet require very different skill sets and training regimens... and Olympic 100m Champions and Marathon Champions are equally deserving of their gold medals.

And finally, without the resources and technical knowledge to build a secure and well-functioning website that enables players worldwide to compete at JockeyChess online, I see no way to actually monetize this invention. And so I hereby cast this notion to the winds of fate. I'd love to see it catch on. (That being said, keep a sharp eye out for a new web page designed solely to raise awareness of this new chess variant.)