Comments by SamTrenholme
Microxiang. The principles of Microshogi applied to Xiang Qi. (4x6, Cells: 24) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]- Sam
The ShortRange Project. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
ChessV
. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]So this program can be downloaded again, I've taken the last full release of the program and made it available on my site:
http://www.samiam.org/chessv/
Fairy-Max: an AI for playing user-defined Chess variants. A chess engine configurable for playing a wide variety of chess variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Mr. Muller:
I would like to have a computer chess contest for a 10x8 chess setup I made a few years ago:
Is it OK if I use your engines (Joker80, FairyMax) as contestants in this contest?
Thank you for your time,
- Sam
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I got permission from three makers of chess engines to enter the 2009 Schoolbook Chess computer tournament; the tournament was a six-game double round robin. The final results were:
ChessV 0.9.0 with time handicap: 3
TJChess10x8: 3
Joker80: 0
The games were Game/15 (all moves in 15 minute) games done on a Core 2 Dual 1.5 ghz laptop processor. A reasonable, but not extensive, effort was made to make sure no other processes were running during the tournament. Both engines played (and pondered) at the same time on the same computer.
TJChess and Joker80 played at Game/15 in WinBoard. ChessV 0.9.0 was given 30 seconds to make a single move.
Joker80 lost all four games it played, giving TJChess10x8 and ChessV 2 points each. In the ChessV-TJChess10x8 games, TJChess10x8 won once as white, as did ChessV.
I observe that Joker80 is usually stronger than TJChess10x8, but plays Game/15 very poorly.
In both TJ-vs-ChessV games, ChessV made a castling move TJChess could not recognize (in Schoolbook, it is legal to move the kind two or three squares while castling, and four squares while castling on the queenside). When this happened, I stopped the clocks, set up the board to have the castling move be done, restarted WinBoard, and gave TJChess10x8 10 minutes to complete the rest of its moves.
The actual games, including Zillions of Games save files of all games, and PGN files of all games played by Joker80, are available at the following location:
For people who do not have Zillions of Games, the save files are in a format that looks like a normal Chess score.
My plan, for the 2010 Schoolbook tournament, is to have the games be played at a time control of 30 seconds per move (1 move in 30 seconds), so that the engines that can't handle tournament time controls (ChessV 0.9.0, Zillions if they ever give me permission, etc.) will be on an even playing field with the engines that can't handle tournament time controls.
I chose Game/15 because this is the time control used at an old chess club where I used to play chess.
Does that sound fair to you for the 2010 Schoolbook tournament?
As an aside, if you have time for it, more documentation for WinBoard and Joker80 (so others don't make the same mistakes I did) would be nice.
However, my description of the Schoolbook rules have the standard 'The rules are otherwise as in FIDE chess' line in them; that includes FIDE tournament time controls. Just as I penalize an engine that can't recognize a castling move the opponent just made (Schoolbook allows the king to move two or three squares while castling, as well as four squares to the left) by resetting the board so the castling move can be done and docking time from the engine that didn't recognize the move, I feel it's fair to penalize engines that don't use FIDE tournament time controls (which have changed over the years, used to be 40 moves in two hours, and are currently 40 moves in 75 minutes, 30 seconds added per move, but because of some grumbling, 40 moves in two hours is still OK).
I might do Schoolbook 2010 as another 'quick chess' tournament (40 moves in 20 minutes, 30 seconds per move for older engines), or I might do it as 40 moves in two hours, or three minutes per move for the engines that can't handle tournament time controls. I haven't decided yet.
As for RTFM and WinBoard fairy, I think all you need to do is add a link to the manual.
Some other points: I have added a disclaimer to Schoolbook 2009 that Joker80's play in the tournament does not reflect its playing strength. In addition, I will have FairyMax be a contestant in Schoolbook 2010, so we can compare it to the other engines.
I hope Zillions gives me permission to enter their engine in to the contest. Or maybe I'll just enter some engines in to the contest without permission, as long as the maker does not object to having the engine in the contest. The reason why I followed the 'permission from the engine maker' rule for Schoolbook 2009 is because there have been issues with this in the past.
Hey, it's really great you did this contest! I have taken the liberty of taking the file, renaming it to Schoolbook-2009-Muller, using a program to make the .zip file a little smaller (Advancecomp, based on the 7-zip code), and putting it at http://samiam.org/schoolbook.
I agree developing the Queen in the Schoolbook array is awkward. The quickest way to develop her (which Joker likes to do) is 1. c3 followed often by 2. Bc2. Unlike FIDE chess, in Schoolbook it's very different to develop the strong pieces quickly early in the game.
It's also a bit difficult to develop the Marshall (Rook + Knight piece). Indeed, because of the setup, often times people end up exchanging off the Marshall early. After 1. f4 f5 2. Bd4, black can now do 2. ... Mh6, which threatens Mxh2.
Now, excuse me while I let some inventor's pride through:
I observed similar problems when designing this variant. The thinking is this: By making the major pieces harder and more awkward to develop, we lower White's advantage. Since there's so much more power on the board than in FIDE Chess, it's important we don't let White quickly dominate things.
Just as, in FIDE Chess, the rooks are pieces that are usually not put in to play until the mid-game or endgame, Schoolbook's unusual setup makes it so all the really powerful pieces aren't as often put in to play until past the opening. This way, the minor pieces are still relevant, develop more easily (knight and bishop development is basically the same as in FIDE Chess, without the tension caused by the queen defending a center pawn), and allow Black to more easily equalize than in other Capablanca setups.
Of course, the disadvantage of this is that games can be longer than for other Capa setups, and some of the patterns are very different from FIDE's patterns.
Speaking of how the Capa opening setup affects the game, the following setups allow white to threaten mate on the first move:
RQNBMKBNAR 1. Md3 mating threat
RQBNAKNBMR 1. Mh3 mating threat
RNBQAKMBNR Gargoyle substitute (1. Mh3 mating threat)
RNBAQKMBNR Capa 1 (1.Mh3 mating threat)
RNBAQKMBNR Embassy substitute (1. Mh3 mating threat)
RBNQKMANBR 1. Mg3 mating threat
RABNQKNBMR Capablanca substitute (1. Mh3 mating threat)
What is your experience with these setups where White can threaten mate on the first move? You used three of them as 'substitute' setups in your 10x8 contest, so I know you have played with some of these. Do they give White a strong advantage? Do these setups seem unbalanced to you?
We had a discussion about this in another thread a couple of years ago, but none of us had the tools to really test the setups, so we were unable to come to any real conclusions.
About SMIRF, it looks like 8x10.net is down, so I was unable to download the most recent version of SMIRF. I have older versions of SMIRF, and they play Schoolbook chess quite nicely, but I don't feel it is fair to enter an older outdated version of SMIRF in to the contest.
I will probably include both a simple implementation of Schoolbook and Mats' tweaked version of Schoolbook in the 2010 tournament. My current plan is to have a double round robin with the following engines:
- Joker80
- FairyMax
- TJChess10x8
- ChessV 0.9.0
- Zillions (Mats' tweaks)
- Zillions (simple .zrf)
OK, as for the opening array, it sounds like there really isn't that much of a difference between say, RNBQAKMBNR (1. Mh3 mating threat) and, say RNQBMKBANR (all pawns defended in the opening array). Looks like the ideas around in the mid-2000s that about needing all of the pawns defended in the opening array didn't hold water. If arrays without all of the pawns defended gave white a significant advantage, I'm sure Muller would have seen it by now.
One issue with computers playing chess is that computers are deterministic. It's akin to Pac-Man in the early 80s, where the ghosts always moved certain ways and players developed patterns to avoid the ghosts and win the maze. Many chess engines are the same; they always make a given move at a given position and time control.
Chess engines playing FIDE chess work around this problem by having an opening book, and choosing a move from their opening book at random until they're out of the book. To do this, however, we need an opening book. Without an opening book, computers do mistakes like developing strong pieces too quickly or trying to set up dubious tactical traps before fully developing pieces.
One way to make an opening book is to have a Chess engine have an analysis mode, where at a given position, the chess engine evaluates all of the possible moves and comes up with a list of all the moves and how good the moves are. A human then, with this list, decides if all of the moves the engine likes are actually good moves, removing moves that develop strong pieces too quickly or set up dubious tactical traps.
I know ChessV has an analysis mode that does just this. For example, in Schoolbook's opening position, here is ChessV 0.9.0's 9-ply analysis of all possible moves:
f4 51
f3 23
e4 21
Nd3 20
Ng3 5
e3 0
c3 -17
d3 -23
Nb3 -42
Ni3 -60
g3 -71
d4 -75
h3 -78
c4 -83
g4 -109
j4 -120
a3 -140
a4 -140
b4 -168
i4 -168
i3 -176
b3 -180
h4 -223
Ad3 -400
Af3 -400
Mh3 -400
Mj3 -400
Here, for example, f3 doesn't look like it's better than e4 (nothing is putting pressure on the center after f3), and e3 doesn't look that great either. The computer appears to like f3 more than e4 because it places more importance on having both the Archbishop and a bishop have more mobility, than on having a pawn put pressure on the center and having only one more piece with mobility.
Likewise, the computer likes c3 more than c4 probably because after 1. c4 f6 (not f5 because of 2. Qxf5+), black has a bishop attacking the pawn on c4 and you can't naturally develop a piece to defend it; indeed Joker80 also seems to prefer c3. So, based on this analysis, and human evaluation of the resulting positions, White's best moves are probably f4, e4, Nd3, Ng3, and c3. This last move allows White's queen to immediately put pressure on the center, and a subsequent Bc2 increases that pressure.
One can argue that an opening book is a bit of a cop-out, especially since there are dozens of equally valid Capablanca opening setups. I agree that having a Chess engine that can reasonably evaluate the opening is a lot better than just using an opening book when playing variants, but it's a lot harder to develop. Since the emphasis has been on FIDE chess for so long, people haven't really done much work on making an engine that can make better opening moves without an opening book. I also find Joker80's non-castling king moves unusual, but Zillions seems to do those too.
I understand that it can be hard to get a chess engine to vary its move. Perhaps it would be possible to add more randomness to the beginning of the game, which decreases as the game progresses. Or perhaps just have another program that automatically generates a fairly reasonable opening book...
That said, Zillions does have a parameter that allows one to adjust how random moves are; I'm not sure how Jeff Mallett and Mark Lefler implemented it.
My plan ('plan' being the operative word) is to modify Winboard to implement free castling, having it so, if playing Schoolbook, one of the engines doesn't recognize the free castling move, Winboard will simply rearrange the pieces for that engine and continue the game. This will give engines that know how to do free castling an edge.
I hope to do all of this 2010 sometime. Right now, my geek time is pretty much filled with finishing up the next release of a DNS server I have written.
In terms of coming up with an opening book for a given variant, assuming a given setup has five reasonable opening moves for white, and each one of those moves has three replies for black (15 so far), and white has three replies for each of those replies (45), and each subsequent reply has three reasonable responses, we have 1215 leaves after 6 plies, or three moves. This is enough to check for things like white having an edge and what not, assuming all chess engines we use are completely deterministic.
Aesthetics aside, that leads to an interesting question: Is it possible to make a Zillions .zrf file that noticeably improves Zillions' pay ('improve' being defined as having more wins) compared to a Zillions rule file that simply implements the rules of the games, leaving it up to Zillions to come up with the best move.
It's a good question, and one I would like to see answered in the 2010 Schoolbook tournament.
In the meantime, I'm slowly but surely building up a Schoolbook opening book. Last night, I ran ChessV all night doing a 12-ply PV evaluation of all of Black's replies to 1. c3. ChessV decided there are really two reasonable replies: 1. ... Ng6 (PV: +29) and 1. ... e5 (PV: +29). The other move that looks reasonable to me, 1. ... e6 (followed by 2. ... f5 to hinder White's control of this central diagonal) was #5 on ChessV's list (after 1. ... f6 and 1. ... d6) with a PV of -23.
Tal was great because he understood the psychology of Chess. Chess is a draw if there is perfect play on both sides. So, in Chess, the goal is to make your opponent make a mistake. Tal was very good at making moves that, while not the best from a theoretical standpoint, would put his opponent off-balance, resulting in them making mistakes.
I like Capablanca chess because it's tactically very sharp, a lot more than FIDE Chess. H.J.Murray, in his 'History of Chess', complained about how 20th century chess has become too strategic. I feel Capablanca chess, by having so much power on the board, recreates the spirit of 19th century romantic chess, where tactics are king and sacrifices are very common.
Centaur Royal and Double Centaur Royal 
. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Update: Estuve equivocado Jose Carrillo has also made at least one Zillions file this last year. Perdón
ChessV 0.9.0, IMHO, was more bug-free than ChessV 0.9.2, and I feel it was Strong's best release of ChessV.
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The source for 0.9.0 is the 'ChessV_Source_0_9.zip' file
Maybe ChessV 0.9.2 will play better than 0.9.0 with your fixes, though. Let me know when a download is available.
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]In terms of making an opening book, while it would be nice to do so with refined values of the pieces (as Greg pointed out, this can be done in ChessV 0.9.0, and my Schoolbook Zillions preset even has a ChessV save game file which one can easily modify with a text editor to tweak the value of the pieces), I’ve already done over half of the work to get a basic 15-node or so opening book for Schoolbook out there so two deterministic Chess engines can play each other a Schoolbook “showdown” and not just play the same game 15 times over.
It’s not a perfect opening book, but I’ve reviewed the openings by hand and I don’t see anything that doesn’t look reasonable. We can always make a better opening book later on, and even play some very fine chess with our imperfect opening book. Indeed, some very excellent Chess was made in the 19th century when openings like the Queen’s pawn opening and the Sicilian defense were considered inferior and very rarely used.
In terms of changing the Joker80 engine to choose from a greater range of possible moves in the opening, I think this is a good idea. I’ve always liked Zillions’ ability to make the move done from a given position more random and I also think it will make Joker80 a stronger Chess player.
I’m very glad to see some serious work being done to computer programs that play Chess and Chess variants competitively. Capablanca/Carrera/Bird Chess, in particular, results in some very sharp and tactical games that computers play very well, and it’s relatively easy to tweak an engine that can play FIDE Chess to play 10x8 Chess. There are dozens of possible opening positions for the pieces, and opening positions we thought in the mid-2000s were no good (positions with first-move mating threats and what not) may very well be OK, but one open question is whether there is any measurable White advantage to a setup where he can threaten mate on the first move.
One thing I would love to see is to have a Chess engine that can be told “Make a reasonable opening library for this particular opening setup”, run the program on a high-end machine for a could of days, and have it output a 1000-node or 2000-node opening book for the setup in question. It won’t be a perfect opening book, but it will be one we can use to research things like seeing how much of an edge White has with a given setup.
I’ll have my list finished up by early next week: Muller’s list also helps a lot with starting up an opening book.
Mats: The reason why we’re studying openings is so computer programs can make reasonable opening moves. It looks like you haven’t been reading this thread. We use a basic opening book to minimize the issues caused when a deterministic computer program plays a given Capablanca setup more than once.
As for human players, an opening book gives a player a pretty good idea of how to start the game. Avoiding “over-analyzed” opening books is easy in Capa setups; there are 720 different opening setups with the rooks in the corner, bishops on opposite colors, and the king on the F file. Of those, 18 have symmetry with the knights and the bishops, and the bishops closer to the center file than the knights.
There simply is no need to implement your idea to advance some pawns one square randomly, and you yourself have pointed out it causes problems in, say, the Embassy setup (RNBQKMABNR or if you insist on having the King in the F file, RNBAMKQBNR), or even your own Teutonic setup (RNBQAKMBNR). Can we please keep the discussion here on-topic without coming up with untested blue-sky ideas?
Sam: The most obvious difference is that Joker80 likes c2-c4 quite a lot, while ChessV thinks it a pretty poor move.
Well, lets look at the ChessV 0.9.0 + Human tweaking opening book 1. c3, 1. Nd3, 1. e4, and 1. f4; I will probably do black responses to 1. Ng3 tonight.
Here is the opening book I have so far:
1. c3 Ng6
1. c3 e5
1. c3 e6
1. Nd3 f5
1. Nd3 Nd6
1. Nd3 Ng6
1. e4 e5
1. e4 Ng6
1. e4 d5
1. f4 f5
1. f4 Nd6
1. f4 c6
And compare it with Joker80’s 12-ply opening book, where it thinks White’s five best moves are: 1. e4 (PV +.05 pawns), 1. c4 (+.05 pawns), 1. c3 (PV +.04 pawns), 1. g4 (PV +.02 pawns), and 1. f3 (PV +.01 pawns). Observe that there are no Knight openings in Joker’s list, and that it thinks 1. f3 (+.01 PV) is better than 1. f4 (+.00 PV, or equality). In addition, Joker80 likes 1. g4 more than ChessV does.
So, there are some significant differences between the openings Joker80 likes and the openings ChessV likes. Both opening books look reasonable; Capa variants have a somewhat higher branching factor than FIDE chess (after White and Black move once in FIDE chess, there are 400 possible positions; in the Schoolbook Capa setup, that number is 784), so I would not be surprised if there are more reasonable openings than in FIDE Chess.
I retract my statement that there is no value in setups where we randomly advance pawns for both sides one square (if we advance White’s c pawn, we advance Black’s c pawn, for example). In FIDE chess, it increases the number of openings by 256; with Capa arrays, it increases the number of openings by 1024 and computer analysis can tell us if certain pawn advancements make for usable opening setups.
Again, I will finish up my ChessV 0.9.0 analysis of the Schoolbook opening setup over the next few days and should have a final opening list up soon.
40 moves in 10 seconds is a little too fast for Joker80. So, I've opten for 40 moves in 30 seconds; I might be able to get away with 40 moves in 15 seconds. Joker80 randomizes its move enough that it's worth it to have it run a few thousands games against itself; a version of Joker80 that essentially randomizes its first two moves would be nice too (or I can have the script just give the engines one of the 784 setups where the first two moves are randomized).
Here is the script that does this:
#!/bin/sh
A=1
while : ; do
winboard.exe -cp -fcp joker80.exe -scp joker80.exe \
-boardSize middling \
-variant capablanca -lpf schoolbook.fen -tc 0:30 \
-mps 40 \
-autosave -sgf game-hour-${A}.pgn -mg 60
A=$(( $A + 1 ))
done
Here is the schoolbook.fen file:
rqnbakbncr/pppppppppp/10/10/10/10/PPPPPPPPPP/RQNBAKBNCR w KQkq - 0 1
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Like languages, many people are most comfortable learning just one variant (normally, the standard 'FIDE'/'Mad Queen' variant), and mastering it. Like a language, learning to play a variant well is a lot of work that most chess players are not willing to invest time in doing.
The most popular Chess Variants are ones where we don't know who originally 'created' the variant; they just came in to being the way a natural language comes in to being, and ended up dominating the world for cultural reasons as much as for the quality of the variant itself.
So, yeah, inventing Chess variants is a fun, but is also, IMHO (in my humble opinion), ultimately pointless exercise.