New answers tagged castling
5
Who cares? Let 1,000 flowers bloom.
There are already a bunch of popular variants so arguing from tradition is pointless at best. Does anyone play Chess 960 exclusively? King of the Hill? If they do, then those are valid creations of clearly high interest to them. If not exclusively, then still clearly fun for them. If not quite so, just eventually of ...
12
This answer will focus on chess as it is played, rather than subdomains like composition or engine development.
Castling is a move that usually accomplishes at least one of two things:
It gets the king to safety.
It develops the rook.
Or both, in just one move. As castling stands now, it requires one move to reach a position that would otherwise take ...
8
Pros: Tal will rise from the dead in excitement at castling not being allowed.
Cons: Fischer will also rise from the dead in excitement.
Undecided: Petrosian will have many of his masterpieces, where he castled late as was his style, left to not be worth as much. How does he feel about this? Who knows?
In all seriousness, this would make the advantage of ...
13
I have no real preference either way, but I'll point out that Kramnik based his argument on AlphaZero playing against itself. Because of AlphaZero's style, it might not be the case that these no-castling games end up in complicated positions more often.
Here're two more games to add using the no-castling rule, played in the TCEC viewer-submitted opening ...
5
As a chess composer myself, it would be extremely upsetting. Over two centuries, give or take, worth of wonderful art would be slammed into dust, now entirely useless somewhat. What's to do with it all now if castling is banned? Banning castling would be like burning down the Library of Alexandria-hudrends of years of work would be lost for many people.
22
It would certainly allow for more attacks due to kings being stuck in the center, but fundamentally changing the game, which in a way dumbs it down, is not good. It would be less complex.
I also do not want to think that I spent 40 years of my life studying something only to have it changed. I do not want the rug pulled out from under me like that.
7
My 2 cents - it's a very stupid idea, on a par with Nigel Short's suggestion to change stalemate into a win.
There are two very good reasons not to do it:
It would completely change opening theory
There are already 959 alternatives if you want to have a form of chess which is similar to the standard format but with different start positions which gives a ...
5
Yes there are some numbers that can (sort of) represent the value of castling.
If you let Stockfish or any other strong engine analyze the starting position, it will generally come to the conclusion that White has roughly a +0.50 advantage. But if you use an opening book (1. Nf3 Nf6 2. Rg1 Ng8 3. Rh1 Nf6 4. Ng1 Ng8 5. Nc3 Nf6 6. Rb1 Ng8 7. Ra1 Nf6 8. Nb1 ...
5
The problem with that move is a number of things.
You gave up the bishop pair.
His attack on your king is stronger than yours on his king, and you traded off a defender.
You have no time to go after his king since yours is threatened with mate on the move.
Already with three minors traded, his threats aside, there might not be enough firepower to attack his ...
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