{"id":295019,"date":"2025-05-01T13:32:04","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T13:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/01\/chess-players-rely-on-familiar-moves-even-when-the-game-changes\/"},"modified":"2025-05-01T13:32:05","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T13:32:05","slug":"chess-players-rely-on-familiar-moves-even-when-the-game-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/01\/chess-players-rely-on-familiar-moves-even-when-the-game-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Chess players rely on familiar moves even when the game changes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chess<\/div> \r\n
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Last year, my son joined the middle school chess club and began using me, a total novice, as his sparring partner. In chess, a player can choose from one of 20 opening moves, including moving a knight in the back row to one of four possible spots or any of the pawns in the front row one or two spaces forward. That opening matters a lot, determining how the game unspools and, ultimately, a player\u2019s odds of winning. I experimented wildly, including with oddball moves, such as moving the pawn on the far right a single space forward. Given how badly that game went, I never used that opener again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet an opening move with a low probability of success in conventional chess might be a winner in Chess960, a decades-old variant of the classic game. In Chess960, pawns still line the front row, but the back pieces are scrambled (though in the same formation for both black and white pieces). It\u2019s a topsy-turvy chess universe where players often rely on tried-and-true opening moves<\/a>, even when an oddball move might yield greater success, researchers reported earlier this month in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.<\/p>\n\n\n