On Mar 29, 4:56 pm, wrote:

I'm sure Bob realised 1.e4 is probably a draw. Bob was conducting a thought
experiment which _assumes_ e4 is a win so your reply misses the point.

well i'm aware the discussion/thread was about checkers,
and in the latest postings about specific openings used, or
left out by Schaeffer in his billion numbers database crunching.
but from what i've read in some articles (June 2007) it's
believed that these openings are irrelevant so they
really think checkers is solved, ie a draw.

Now i made a jump back to chess again as
rec.games.chess etc. is about chess, isnt it.
And with similar reasoning, lets say that. after 10 or 20
years or so someone would bother to do a similar
exercise as Schaeffer, but now for chess, starting with
openings d4, e4, Nf3, c4, and then would claim
its a draw. Then of course some people might
say: well you haven't tested e.g. 1.a3! or 1. h3 yet,
so it's not 'proven' yet that chess is a draw.
This then would not be a strong argument, as
after 1.a3 d5! 2.d4 we would get similar positions
as d4 opening lines, whereas after 1.h3 e5 2.e4 we would
get similar opening lines as e4 e5 by transposition.

Only relevant reasoning seems to be to investigate
what opening lines are more double-edged, like eg Sicilian
rather than drawish. If in certain tournaments one would
like to stimulate exciting play, than eg. as response
to e4 they could make eg. c5 obligatory.
But this would change such tournaments into
specific theme-tournaments, as eg. often
is done already in correspondence chess
(eg. d4 games with Benko gambit only or so).
Not the way to go forward imho.

Better extend chess to chess960 i would say,
probably (indeed) much more exciting


best regards
jef