Next time some of you are at a tournament waiting for round 1 to start, why not try “announced move” chess?
On white’s first move, he does not play a move. He simply announces what his first move will be.
Then, on black’s first move, black does the same thing. He announces his first move rather than making it.
On each subsequent move, white makes the move he announced previously, then announces his next move.
Black does the same thing.
By “announce a move” I mean unambiguously, by specifying the departure and arrival squares, if necessary.
If your previously announced move turns out to be illegal, you lose.
Therefore, a key strategy is to make your opponent’s announced move illegal. This could be done by capturing the announced piece, interposing a piece between the departure and arrival squares, pinning the opponent’s announced piece, or even (in most cases) simply putting your opponent in check.
But it’s not that simple, because you, too, must make your announced move – you can’t just willy nilly capture, interpose, pin, or check.
I don’t get it. Say White announces his first move as 1.e2-e4. Black announces his first move as 1…e7-e5. White plays 1.e2-e4 on the board and announces his next move as 2.Ng1-f3. Black plays 1…e7-e5 on the board and announces that his next move will be 2…Nb8-c6. How can either player force the other to make an illegal move?
This is the “lag” puzzle concept transmuted to actual play.
Shot puzzles (like those of Fred Reinfeld or Ray Cheng) show the current position and ask you what the next move should be.
Lag shot puzzles show you a slightly outdated puzzle plus the subsequent two half-moves; and then ask you want the next move should be.
Ian Anderson’s apparently defunct Chess Visualization Course puzzle books, devoted more to “counting” than to shots, gave a position plus many subsequent half-moves; and finally asked what the resulting material balance or imbalance was.
Anderson’s puzzles fill an under-served or un-served niche in the body of chess literature; and they kinda do work at creating an improved sense of visualization in just a couple of days of intensive training - I was kinda impressed at how quickly the mental automation was built and kicked in.
But the weakness of Anderson’s lag format is that the student must move his eyes back-forth-back-forth too many times when there are man half-moves presented. It was a physical strain.
I tried using a free text-to-speech modification of Anderson’s format, and that was a little better but had its own problems.
And in both cases, the SAN notation is probably not the best choice - maybe better would be raw coordinate notation such as f3-e5 (instead of Nxe5 which tells you there was a piece on e5 instead of making you remember that with your visualization).
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For a casual game it might be interesting. For a tournament (probably non-rated), I can see problems.
I’m assuming notation would be taken when announcing as otherwise there will be illegal move win claims, both valid and bogus, contested by the other player with no record as to what happened.
When going over my notation later I occasionally find errors like Rb2 written instead of Rb7. With “announce move” only what it written can indicate what had been previously announced and simple notation errors can cause huge differences in what happens on the board (bringing that element of postal chess into OTB).
Each player plays a move, and announces what the opponent’s response cannot be. White plays 1.e4, for example, and prevents Black from playing 1… e5, by announcing, after White’s move, “… and NOT 1…e5!” However, if the opponent has only one legal move, the player cannot “not it” (although that could be a rules variation-- but maybe not).
Or worse, if one “Announces” Mate in 5, and it actually turns out to be Mate in 6, does 1 lose on that technicality because of the wrong number of moves? It sounds like “Announced Move” chess is going to be a constant “Work in Progress”.
I am still trying to puzzle the point of this variant. One might say that announcing 3.Qh5(-)xf7(+) is bad when Black has the freedom to put a piece on g6, making Qh5-f7 illegal. But Black had already lost that freedom when he announced 2…Ng8-f6 on move 2.
Well, …Nf6 chased your queen away just as effectively as …g6 would have, it seems to me.
Since the played moves are just the first n-2 announced moves, I think we can simplify the notation, as above.
I’m trying to puzzle the point, too. So far it seems pretty close to regular chess. I had hoped for weird tactics based on interposing one’s queen between the departure and arrival squares of the opponent’s announced move, but this isn’t happening because one’s own move must be announced, as well.
Your 2.Qh5 made me think you may have cooked the game somehow, but I couldn’t see how, so I simply proceeded normally.
Here’s another variant. No announced moves. I’ll call it 1-2-2-2-2-2 chess. (Sort of like the way pairing cards end up after round 1 is paired – if you’ve ever TD’d with pairing cards, you’ll know what I mean.)
White plays 1 move, then black plays 2, then white plays 2, then black plays 2, etc.
That way, white is 1 move ahead only as often as black is 1 move ahead. Does this equalize the situation between the two players?
Would two of you, other than me, care to try this?
