[Retros] Thoughts about P0000230

[Guus Rol]

I verified Werner Keym's comments and agree with his references and general
conclusion. The problem may have been correct in its time but would not
survive The Rotterdam/Portoroz Codex.



It would be unjust however to conclude that the "castling move" is the
(only) reason for its dismissal. There are at least 2 other granades in the
Rotterdam/Portoroz artillery shooting down Kisljak's creation: (1) With the
removal of all automaticity, any stipulation of the type "White retracts one
move in such a way, that the (resulting) position is drawn" cannot register
a result. With the loss of the Piran 50M article and its implied
automaticities, all 50M draw claims must now be considered optional again as
in FIDE law 9.3 (2) Even under the (dubious) assumption that either black or
white will always be interested to claim a draw, no “semi-automatic” draw
can be justified. Reason: Black can never claim a 50M draw when it is
white's move (same article).



In order to repair a composition like Kisljak's for the 21st century, one
would - besides removing the castling trick - need to insert white interest
and strategic participation in both phases of the stipulation, e.g.: "White
retracts one move in such a way that he can draw in 0 moves". The
artificiality in the stipulation creeps in inevitably to compensate for the
loss of automation in the new article 17. When you zoom in on FIDE law 9.3,
not even this stipulation form is safe. The side playing can make a
preemptive draw claim after 49.5 moves without ever playing the move though
he must write it down on the scoresheet. This may arguably be viewed as
a "draw in 0" as well. The Codex didn't even bother to eliminate such an
annoying potential ambiguity for the composers.



One wonders if it is worth paying the price of setting up artificial
stipulations - plus losing many problems based on automatic draws which
can’t be repaired this way - only to make the Codex look natural. No it is
not and the Codex itself proves it. As miraculously as automaticity was
dismissed for 50M in 1991/1997, it popped up in article 18 for the
"repetition draw" in the same Codex version! If automation had become a
dejectable deviation from the chess game for 50M positions, why not would
the same be true in a convention on repetitions? Frankly, I cannot perceive
of any decent answer to that question.



What do other composers think of this situation? Well, I do not know the
answer from their verbal or written comments but fortunately I can see what
they are doing! They have a long discussion on this list on the maximum
length of a proof game and conclude it is six thousand moves plus a
chocolate bar long. Utter sillyness if you consider article 17.
They continue to produce problems based on automatic 50M draws and dubious
stipulations - though not as many as in the heighdays of the last century.
In fact, they completely ignore article 17 of the Rotterdam/Portoroz Codex
except where it accidently agrees with their objectives. If anything, they
live by the spirit of the Piran Codex and it is therefore not surprising
(though incorrect) that someone would believe that castling breaks a 50M
sequence as stated in that Codex version. My gamble is that most composers
still mistakenly view the 1991/1997 version as a supplementary update rather
than a replacement of the Piran Codex.



At the end of the day, someone is bound to excuse the situation by quoting
the PCCC that the Codex is intended to be descriptive rather than
prescriptive and that we should all actually be very happy that the
retro-community is charting its own course. This attitude is open to debate
but if we accept it then some intriguing questions remain unanswered (1) Why
did PCCC dispose of so many great pre-1997 problems based on automatic 50M
draws? and  (2) When will the PCCC start describing again what we are doing
and have been doing all along with 50M positions? Not to say that it was bad
to eliminate the castling quirk which should never have been introduced in
the first place without backing by FIDE law.



Finally, when listing what could be expected from PCCC, one of the frist
things that comes to mind is that it should free us from the components in
FIDE law that can’t be conveniently copied to the world of problems like
time clocks, arbiters, score sheets, hand-shaked agreements, claims and
preemptive claims. Replace them with predictable and decently behaving
“probots” and every retro lover will be happy again!



Guus.
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