Re: Chess

["David J Bush" <twixt@cstone.net>]

| > The last serious change in the rules of Chess occurred in the 1930s, ...
| > ... I think the only rule changes since then have to do with time clocks
| and
| > touch move.  Nothing that you would see when you read the game moves after
| > the fact.
| 
| I believe the new time rules (the most important one having been introduced
| by Bobby Fischer) are generally considered a serious change, at least by
| serious tournament players.  The notations of games don't include how much
| time remains, but perhaps they should -- often the annotater has to insert
| something like, "This move was clearly wrong, but the player had only a few
| seconds left on his clock."

The time controls to be used in a tournament are decided by the organizers of
that tournament. Digital chess clocks with incremental time controls were
around for several years before Fischer claimed the idea as his own. It is
true that digital clocks have become much more popular lately, but I doubt
Fischer had anything to do with it. In the US, the time control "officially
endorsed" by the USCF is a DELAY time control, where your "main" clock time
does not start counting down until some specified "delay" time has counted
down to zero. Incremental or "Fischer" time control, where a set amount of
time is ADDED to your clock each time you make a move, is generally NOT as
popular in USCF tournaments, although it certainly is widely used. Anyway,
all sorts of different ways to control the amount of time each player takes
have been tried, since well before digital display clocks arrived.

I agree that the amount of time remaining can have a profound effect on the
quality of play, but I don't think that's what Bart was referring to as the
rules of Chess. Speaking of which, I believe there have been recent amendments
to the 50-move rule, which IS part of the rules. Computer analysis of certain
endgame positions has revealed quite a few positions which require more than
50 moves by both sides without a pawn push or capture, in order to force a win.
I remember reading an article about these positions, one of which required over
200 moves by both sides before something got captured. I don't know exactly
which exceptions have been officially accepted by FIDE, but I'm sure some of
them have, probably as recently as five years ago.

David