David Richerby wrote:
No doubt Fischer Random chess would level the playing field more,

Computers don't play the opening *all that* badly.

You misunderstood. Computers play the openings extremely well. In
fact, that's where they really shine because the moves re still
limited and can be stored as an opening database.

Sorry: I was very unclear there. What I meant was that computers
don't play the opening all that badly even with the opening book
turned off. When a strong human plays a computer with an opening
book, they come out of the opening about equal, usually. When the
opening book is turned off, the human may obtain an advantage because
he knows the theory and the computer has to work everything out.
However, in Fischer Random, *neither* player knows the theory so the
computer's increased calculation will probably be an advantage.

This is a topic that is very interesting to me, being an ardent
Chess_18 player. In the past, some posters have suggested that
when GMs play OTB FRC against computers, they build up a positional
advantage up to approximately the 10th move. If this is, indeed, the
case, GMs' competitiveness in _entity_ FRC chess may be more lasting
than in _entity_ Orthodox chess ("entity" OTB chess involves at least
one "player" who is not human).

Still, even Fischer Random has a finite number of first positions,
which you could still analyze and store.

Current opening books are based mainly on human, not computer,
analysis and this analysis has been done by thousands of grandmasters
over, say, the last hundred years. If a computer could produce this
quality of analysis relatively quickly, it would be able to play the
opening well enough that the computer-generated opening book wouldn't
be all that much of an advantage (it would maybe give you a few extra
ply).

In all probability, humans will be spearheading the analysis of such
openings. This means that analysts will be busy for a very long time...
In my humble opinion, such a turn of "chessic" events would be
_wonderful_.
All-human "chess" may benefit tremendously by a more extensive but
"flatter"
opening theory! 8)

But imagine if one day, long after a computer has become world
champion

People keep saying this and it's complete nonsense. It's like
seeing the invention of the motor car and saying, `Imagine one day,
long after a motor car is the world sprinting champion.'

Well, that reduces chess to pure brute force calculation, which
changes the game a bit for me.

It's a finite (assuming that any available draw claims are made),
game of perfect information. We've known for as long as people have
been thinking about games mathematically that such games can always be
solved by brute-force calculation, in theory at least. I grant you
that it's only recently that brute force has become a practical way to
play chess but it's been a possibility for as long as there've been
computers.

But, since we've `always' known that chess could be brute-forced and
that it's totally infeasible for an unassisted human to use that
approach, I really don't think that the strength of computers has any
impact on what happens when you and I sit down at opposite sides of a
chess board.

I think that the difficulties here are rather psychological.
Prior to computers, only some deity could "snicker" every time
a GM would make some _deep_ mistake in OTB play. Such mistakes
would go on unnoticed, probably forever... As computers continue
becoming ever more powerful tactical players and analysts, some
humans appear to feel that an imaginary computer "snickering" in
the background does lots of damage to the game's mystique. I would
like to approach this conundrum from a rather humoristic angle.
Namely, what if an omniscient deity would "snicker" in the back-
ground _exclusively_ every time a powerful computer makes a _deep_
mistake? Such mistakes would go on unnoticed, probably for some
time! 8)

P.S. The ultimate deity is, of course, one that has at its dis-
posal all data compilations regarding N-piece chess ending table-
bases where N = 3, 4, ... , 32.