Comments by SamTrenholme
What is you experience with how being colorbound affects the value of a short range leaper?
For example, my gut instinct tells me a ferz (moves one square like a bishop) is worth more than an alfil (jumps two squares like a bishop), since an alfil can only access 25% of the board, and a ferz can access 50% of the squares on the board. Likewise, a wazir (one square like a rook) should be worth more than a ferz, since it can access all of the squares on the board.
Thanks for your input (and I'm sure the short range project will greatly appreciate your reseaarch).
- Sam
- Sam
I think the joy of inventing a Chess variant is the joy of being able to develop opening, midgame, and endgame theory for the new game and new rules.
This is why I only have invented a single chess variant, but I made it one I extensively tested using Zillions before making public, one where I developed some opening theory, and one that I spent hours having the computer play against itself in computer-vs-computer games (usually two different programs playing each other) to creating interesting mating positions.
I personally prefer quality over quantity; 90% of everything is crud, but I think it's better to make just a single variant where it's fully fleshed out: The game includes a game courier preset, a zillion's implementation, in addition to a clearly written description of the rules. Ideally, the game should have some theory established, such as the value of the pieces in the variant, some opening theory developed, and even some mating problems.
- Making sure the variant has a Zillions and a Game Courier preset
- Calculating the value of the pieces in the variant
- Coming up with some mating problems from actual games played in the variant, either human-vs-human, human-vs-computer, or computer-vs-computer
- Coming up with some opening theory for the game
I think looking at a Capa 8x10 setup is probably the best chess variant to deeply analyze. These particular avenue has been pretty deeply analyzed, with a pretty good idea about the value of the pieces and what not. I think it's important the opening setup has no controversy; I like the original Carrera setup (RANBQKBNCR), but Embassy chess (RNBQKCABNR) can also be worth looking at.
- Sam
I, myself, don't trust anything to do with or associated with said unspeakable variant. Mr. Muller: What is your favorite Capa opening setup? Do you prefer the Carrera (RANBQKBNCR), Embassy (RNBQKCABNR), or some other Capa opening setup?
Conditional Quantum Chess. You may move to two squares each turn, but only one is a real move. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I'm the opposite. I prefer quality over quantity (see the recent proliferation thread for my viewpoint on all this).
- Sam
That said, I think I might start a deep opening analysis of Mastodon Chess 10x10 with Donkeys.
In addition to pieces, he has also brought the Gustav board back, something I never heard of until seeing it mentioned on his page. I think the Gustav board is a good way of introducing new pieces to FIDE chess without having the new board affecting the game too much, and without somewhat clunky ideas as gating (Gating makes sense when you want the game to be just as much like FIDE chess with new pieces as possible; but the Gustav board is more intuitive and makes for simpler rules).
One can argue 'Why design games that no one plays', just as one can argue 'why analyze games no one plays', and in both cases the answer is the same: Because it can be an enjoyable way to pass the time. If the act of creating a game brings pleasure to someone, it doesn't matter if that game is never played by anyone.
Interesting thought. Lets take the 'Swastika'/'Flywheel' and 'Shuriken', and remove the ferz/wazir move from the piece. Now we have this, which I will call the 'Spinner':
. X . . . . . . . X . . Z . . X . . . . . . . X .
This piece, as it turns out, is 5-way colorbound ('Colorbound' is a Betza-ism that means 'this piece can not reach all of the squares on the board'); each side needs five of these pieces to reach the entire board. Now, since the colorboundness is somewhat unusual, if you add another unrelated colorbound move, such as the move of a ferz (Our 'Flywheel'), the piece is no longer colorbound, but can reach every square on the board. Heck, if you add the pawn move to this piece (The piece can move, but not capture, one square straight ahead), the piece is no longer colorbound.
Mad Queen Shogi. Missing description (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I think the issue is that a stack-based language is what a linguist calls an 'Object Subject Verb' (OSV) language, which are extremely rare in human languages. Languages are usually 'Subject Verb Object' (SVO) languages (English; Spanish; 'a = 2' in programming languages), which is what most programming languages use. Function calls emulate the form of 'Verb Subject Object' (VSO, such as Irish; 'f(a,2)' in programming languages) languages, however, as it turns out.
So, yeah, I think Axiom might get more users if it used a more common language than Forth.
- Sam
Edit: Looking at it a little more, it's nice to finally see a Zillions implementation of Tanbo, which Axiom made possible. I don't see any Chess variants, however.
Gustavian Adjutant Chess
. Standard chess with empty extra corner squares and extended castling (with zrf).[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Another idea I like along the same lines is to keep black pieces where they are, but swap White's queen and king. Now, in White's OO move, the king moves right two squares (from the d file to the f file) and the h rook moves left three squares, and in White's OOO move, the king moves left two square (from the d file to the b file) and White's a rook moves right 2 squares to the c file.
Any other ideas for modest chess variants that keep the game the same as much as possible, while throwing out the FIDE opening book?
Spartan Chess 28. Missing description (4x7, Cells: 28) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]How would you change the opening arrangement to address these issues you brought up?
- Sam
Parachess. Chess on a rhombus-tiled board. (Cells: 72) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Do you have Zillions? If you do, you can see in the Zillions file alternate opening setups with pieces, as I recall, akin to the 'Marshall' and 'Cardinal' in this game.
- Sam
Penturanga. Chaturanga on a board with 46 pentagonal cells. (8x5, Cells: 46) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Speaking of which, is there any interest in my inventing a variant using an alternate tessellation. I have an idea that has been bouncing around my head for over a decade which I should make a variant out of, but only if people would be interested in looking at it.
- Sam
Would you be open to me modifying your Zillions' file to have, in the variant pop-down-list, some ideas suggested here:
- Free pawn promotion
- An opening setup where each side gets three elephants
- Both of the above ideas
- Sam
Other people enjoy inventing new pieces and making a variant based on those pieces. Betza enjoyed this; he also enjoyed finding a mix of pieces just as strong as the FIDE pieces so one could have balanced games with different Chess armies. Other people enjoy combining themes of various variants to create something using a new theme.
For me, I like a variant where we quickly get out of the opening book and in to the 'street fighting' of trying to do tactics better than your opponent. I also like opening analysis of a variant, for the sake of opening analysis (not that said analysis is useful; then again opening analysis was not really useful in FIDE chess until the 20th century).
This is why I like Capa/Grand Chess variants; with two more pieces almost as powerful as the queen on the board, the games get very tactical very quick. Just like 'mad queen' chess before people discovered boring defenses like the Sicilian defense.
And, there are a lot of Capa opening setups one can choose from making it so there is never a chance of the opening getting stale. But that doesn't stop me from having done some opening analysis of my particular Capa openeing setup.
So, I generally don't invent variants because I find more joy in playing and studying variants already invented, and because there are already a lot of possibilities, even with the modest Capa variants.
- Sam
The hard part is fleshing out the variant. A reasonable Zillions implementation can be done in the course of an afternoon. Once this is done, the game can be play tested. I have done this, and have concluded some ideas I had just don't make the games I like to play.
What Mr. Muller has done is far more impressive. He has written one of the strongest chess variant playing programs out there, and has done a lot of extensive research about the real value of some of the fairy pieces on various boards.
I like to see a variant fleshed out: Sample games, some basic opening theory, some mating problems, so people can get a sense of how to play the game before sitting down and playing the game. This is a lot more work than inventing a new kind of piece, which is why I think the type of real research Mr. Muller does is comparatively rare.
- Sam
I liked, for example, Fergus' 'Storm the Ivory Tower', because I think it was really cool to do something with Smess' idea of making the board affect how pieces move, and it was nice to integrate this idea with some ideas in Chinese Chess. In addition, when people pointed out they didn't like the graphics, Fergus went to all of the effort to make a whole bunch of different graphics available in the Zillions preset.
I also think Mats has come up with a lot of interesting ideas and pieces, and I like how he always makes Zillions implementations and even tries to improve Zillions' gameplay.
- Sam
CHECKers. A very Checkerslike Chess variant. Or is it a Chesslike Checkers variant? (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I'd also like to see some opening theory and mating problems, but I think I'm the only chess variant inventor who has bothered developing a chess variant that much.
Of course, my comments on the proliferation thread show that I'm definitely not a proliferator.
- Sam
In other words, if we have an empty 8x8 board and a white Chiral Marshall on the D1 square, this piece can move to B2, C3, D5, D6, D7, D8 (the four rook moves which must end on the opponent's side of the board), E3, and F2.
The same Chiral Marshall on D8 can move to A8, B8, C8, D8, E8, F8, G8, H8 (rook move), B7, C6 (knight moves), D7, D6, D5, D4 (rook move again), E6, and F7 (knight moves).
The black Chiral Marshall can only make a rook move ending on White's half of the board (A1-H4)
I like this because it encourages more aggressive play; by making the pieces more powerful on the opponent's side of the board, it makes passive play less fruitful and should make games more exciting.
- Sam
Ninth Century Indian Chess. Differs from Shatranj in the setup and the Elephant's move. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]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.
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-${A}.pgn -mg 60
A=$(( $A + 1 ))
done
Here is the schoolbook.fen file:
rqnbakbncr/pppppppppp/10/10/10/10/PPPPPPPPPP/RQNBAKBNCR w KQkq - 0 1
With the version of WinBoard I'm using, there is no option for animation (and no animation in the game) nor an option for turning off the GUI (-noGUI doesn't work, nor does /noGUI, and the help files don't seem to have anything). I'm using Winboard 4.3.15m.
Which version of Winboard are you using? It's in the GUI under Help->about.
- Gave each side 40 seconds to do 40 moves (too slow for what we're doing)
- Disabled pondering with -xponder
#!/bin/sh
SECS=10
while : ; do
winboard.exe -noGUI -xanimate -cp -fcp joker80.exe -scp joker80.exe \
-boardSize middling -xponder \
-variant capablanca -lpf schoolbook.fen -tc 0:${SECS} -mps 40 \
-autosave -sgf game-${SECS}sec-40moves-$(date +%s).pgn -mg 10
sleep 1
done
While there still is the occasional game won on time, most of the time the game ends in checkmate or draws by repetition.
Note that I also hacked backend.c to remove the popup that tells you the match results at the end of a match.
Sometimes, one of the sides loses on time. Since it is a little more complicated to adjudicate such a game to see who had the better position when the flag fell, I have simply discarded any game which does not end with a draw or a checkmate (Joker80, unlike TJChess10x8, never resigns).
Once I did this, here is the win/loss/draw statistics I have so far for Joker80 playing Schoolbook Chess against itself with a 40 moves in 10 seconds time control:
e4 Win: 51.6556% Loss: 38.4106% draw 9.93377% Total 151
f4 Win: 51.4019% Loss: 41.1215% draw 7.47664% Total 107
f3 Win: 52.381% Loss: 33.3333% draw 14.2857% Total 63
c4 Win: 44.2623% Loss: 40.9836% draw 14.7541% Total 61
c3 Win: 38.8889% Loss: 50% draw 11.1111% Total 18
h3 Win: 100% Loss: 0% draw 0% Total 2
Ni3 Win: 100% Loss: 0% draw 0% Total 1
Total Win: 50.3722% Loss: 38.9578% draw 10.67% Total 403
#!/bin/sh
awk '{
l=$0;
sub(/\[.*\]/,'',l);
# Get opening move
if(match(l,/^1\./)) {
sub(/{.*/,'',l);
sub(/^1\.[ \t]*/,'',l);
sub(/[ ]+.*$/,'',l);
opening=l
}
# Tally up wins and losses
if(match(l,/Checkmate/) || match(l,/mates/) || match(l,/resign/)) {
sub(/{.*}[ ]*/,'',l);
if(match(l,/0\-1/)) {
loss[opening]++;
} else if(match(l,/1\-0/)) {
win[opening]++;
}
opening = 'invalid'
}
# Tally up draws
if(match(l,/1\/2\-1\/2/)) {
draw[opening]++
opening = 'invalid'
}
}
END {
for(a in win) {
print 'W Opening ' a ' won ' win[a] ' times.'
}
for(a in loss) {
print 'L Opening ' a ' lost ' loss[a] ' times.'
}
for(a in draw) {
print 'D Opening ' a ' drew ' draw[a] ' times.'
}
}' | awk '# Tally total results by opening
{result = $1; opening = $3; times = $5;
tally[opening] = tally[opening] ' ' result ' ' times;
total[opening] += times;
}
END { for(o in tally) {
print o ' ' tally[o] ' T ' total[o]
} }' | awk '# Make percentage win/los/draw
{
opening = $1
for(a in z) { delete z[a]; }
for(a=2;a<=NF;a++) {
if(a % 2 == 0) {
d = $a
} else {
z[d] = $a
}
}
if(z['T'] > 0) {
t = z['T'];
if(t != 0) {
w = z['W'] / t;
l = z['L'] / t;
d = z['D'] / t;
w *= 100; l *= 100; d *= 100;
tt += z['T']; tw += z['W'];
tl += z['L']; td += z['D'];
}
print opening ' Win: ' w '% Loss: ' l '% draw ' d '% Total ' t
}
}
END {
if(tt != 0) {
tw = tw / tt; tw *= 100;
tl = tl / tt; tl *= 100;
td = td / tt; td *= 100;
}
print 'Total Win: ' tw '% Loss: ' tl '% draw ' td '% Total ' tt
}'
Here is the final ChessV-0.9.0-generated list (with human tweaking) of Schoolbook openings:
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
1. Ng3 Ng6
1. Ng3 e5
1. Ng3 c6
Next: Run 100 40-moves-in-10-second games for each of these openings to see which ones make Joker80 have more wins as white at this time control. Should I point out, at this point, that Joker80’s wins as White decrease when I increase its time control?
Timeline: There is no timeline. Whenever I feel like doing it.
Note that games lost on time do not count; only games with a definite resolution were counted in these statistics (if we played 100 games and 10 were lost on time, I only counted the other 90):
Nd3-Nd6 57%
Nd3-Ng6 56%
Nd3-f5 55%
e4-Ng6 57%
e4-d5 52%
e4-e5 51%
f4-Nd6 60%
f4-f5 52%
f4-c6 47%
c3-e5 58%
c3-Ng6 47%
c3-e6 46%
Ng3-e5 49%
Ng3-Ng6 48%
Ng3-c6 45%
Here, the first column is the first two moves played; the second column is the percent figure as described above. I’ve grouped all of whites moved together in the above list, and have sorted them based on White’s winning percentage if Black makes his best reply.
Anyway, that was fun but this should be my last work on Schoolbook until 2010, when I start preparing for the Schoolbook 2010 tournament. I have a DNS server that I want to finish up that I’ve been neglecting this last week.
Win: 47.2527% Loss: 35.1648% draw 17.5824% score 56.044%
So, then, looking at the games I saw Black wasn't defending as well as he should, so I ran 100 games with three times the time: 40 moves in 30 seconds. I got considerably different results:
Win: 40.8602% Loss: 45.1613% draw 13.9785% score 47.8495%
('score' above is White wins + Draws/2)
Here, we see Black defends a lot better and White doesn't win nearly as often.
Point being, on my system (Core 2 dual, 1.5 ghz), the 40-moves-in-10-seconds games does not give us enough time to play well enough to determine whether a given opening is any good. 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nb6 is a fine defense for Black, but we need more time for each game to see that.
As an aside, one of the 30-seconds-for-40-moves games has this pretty checkmate:
1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nb6 3. Ne2 Nxd5 4. f3 c6 5. c4 Nb6 6. c5 Nd5 7. Bc2 g6 8. Cj3 Ad7 9. Qd1 h5 10. Nhg3 Ke8 11. Bf2 Nb4 12. Ba4 b5 13. cxb6 axb6 14. O-O Ni6 15. d4 Qd6 16. Ne4 Qe6 17. Ci5 j6 18. Nf4 Qc4 19. b3 Qa6 20. Axb4 jxi5 21. Bxc6 Kf8 22. Bxd7 Nh4 23. g3 Cj6 24. Axa6 Cxj2 25. Nxg6+ fxg6 26. gxh4 Cj1# 0-1
ChessV. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I believe his next chess engine (which can already play FIDE chess) does not have this issue.
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]So, I started my computer making a bunch of 40-moves-in-4-second games last night. There's another issue: About once every 1,000 games, Joker80 crashes, and this stops WinBoard from generating games unattended. I'll see if removing the offending pop-up from WinBoard allows Winboard to restart and continue making games when Joker80 crashes. It may also be necessary to suppress the 'send bug report to Microsoft' window.
The nice thing about games this quickly is that I already have +/- 2% numbers for White's wins with the 1. e4 f5 2. exf5 Nb6 Schoolbook opening:
Win: 45.3718% Loss: 42.868% draw 11.7602% score 51.2519% Total 1318
(Win: Number of White wins. Loss: Number of White losses. Draw: Number of draws. Score: White wins + draws/2 Total: Number of games played)
Compare this to the +/- 5% numbers I got from 100 40-moves-in-60-second games for the same Schoolbook opening yesterday:
Win: 46% Loss: 45% draw 9% score 50.5% Total 100
As we can see, the numbers are almost the same.
Also, can you combine 'wild' with 'board's like Capablanca?
Finally, is the source code to this server available?
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]In the 2000s, we have had many discussions about what makes for the best Capablanca setup. It has been asserted, for example, that all of the pawns need to be defended in the opening setup, and that any opening setup with undefended pawns gives White a sizable advantage.
What I have done is research a subset of Capablanca setups to see if this is true. Since there are some 126,000 setups where the Queen is to the left of the King and the bishops are on opposite colors with the Capablanca pieces, I have reduced the number of setups to six thusly:
- The rooks must be in the corners. The king must be in the F file. This is to accommodate the software I used for my testing, which only allows castling if these conditions are met.
- The knights must be in the C and H files, and the bishops must be in in the D and G files. The thinking is this: Since the knights are weaker in Capablanca setups on a 10x8 board than they are in FIDE chess, placing the knights relatively near the center makes them more relevant in the opening and midgame. The bishops are placed near the center just like they are placed in FIDE chess; this is done so that natural pawn development moves (e4, f4) do not hamper the development of the bishops.
- The Archbishop (Knight + Bishop), Marshall (Rook + Bishop), and Queen may be placed anywhere in the three remaining files.
- RMNBAKBNQR (I call this arrangement “Notetaker’s Chess”; all pawns are defended in the opening array)
- RQNBAKBNQR (“Schoolbook Chess”; again, all pawns are defended)
- RANBMKBNQR (I call this arrangement “Narcotic Chess”; the B pawn is undefended in the opening array)
- RQNBMKBNAR (I call this arrangement “Opiate Chess”; the D and I pawns are undefended in the opening array and White can threaten mate on the first move with Md3)
- RANBQKBNMR (“Aberg Chess”; the B pawns are undefended)
- RMNBQKBNAR (“Carrera Chess”; the original 10x8 setup from the 1600s; the I pawns are undefneded)
| Setup | Wins | Losses | Draws | Games played |
| ranbqkbnmr | 46% | 43% | 12% | 1010 |
| rmnbqkbnar | 47% | 42% | 12% | 1017 |
| ranbmkbnqr | 49% | 41% | 10% | 1002 |
| rqnbakbnmr | 48% | 40% | 13% | 1006 |
| rqnbmkbnar | 50% | 38% | 11% | 1004 |
| rmnbakbnqr | 53% | 37% | 10% | 1011 |
(Numbers may not add up to 100% because of rounding). Since we played 1,000 games with each variant, the scores may be off by as much as 2% or so.
In conclusion, we can see that whether or not all pawns are defended is not a relevant factor in White having more of an advantage. The setup with the lowest White advantage (ranbqkbnmr, White advantage 3%) has one undefended pawn for each side in the opening array, and the setup with the highest White advantage (rmnbakbnqr, White advantage 16%) has all pawns defended in the opening array.
ranbqkbnmr appears to be the most balanced setup (3% White advantage); this is followed by rmnbqkbnar (5% White advantage). ranbmkbnqr and rqnbakbnmr both have an 8% White advantage; ranbmkbnqr has fewer draws, however. Both rqnbmkbnar and rmnbakbnqr give White a considerable advantage (12% and 16%, respectively); I am not surprised rqnbmkbnar has a considerable White advantage, since the D pawn near the King is unprotected, and since White can threaten mate on the first move with Md3. However, it is a mystery why White has such an advantage with the rmnbakbnqr, since all pawns are defended in this setup. It would appear undefended flank pawns don’t give White any significant advantage.
For people interested in this research, I have made a 4-megabyte archive with all of the games played in the course of this research here:
http://www.samiam.org/schoolbook/I would like to thank H.G. Muller for modifying Winboard and creating Joker80; this software made this research reasonably straightforward to perform.
Edit: The Aberg and Carrera setups only have one undefended pawn.
You know, I used to be a Linux fanatic. Then I started using Ubuntu. Now my computer, which I bought as a Linux laptop, runs Windows XP. The problem with Ubuntu is that it’s, as you have observed too unstable: The drivers are too unstable, the software API is too unstable, etc. Since the majority of Linux developers are unpaid, there is no central command and control that can keep the programmers disciplined enough to make a commercial grade desktop product like Windows or MacOS.
The only version of Linux I use today is a free RedHat enterprise Linux clone called CentOS. Hardware support comes slowly; my laptop’s hardware is not fully supported in RHEL/CentOS 5 so I have to wait until CentOS 6 (should be early to mid 2010) before considering running Linux on my computer again [1].
The advantage of RHEL is that, once a given piece of hardware is supported, the OS is supported with bug fixes and security enhancments for a period of seven years. At the start of 2014 Windows XP will still be supported by Microsoft (at least in theory; there is a known bug with XP’s TCP/IP stack if you run a TCP server like Apache or FICS that Microsoft will not fix, since XP isn’t designed to run TCP/IP services); RHEL 5 will still be supported by RedHat. This kind of EOL schedule allows me to upgrade my OS on my timeframe, not the timeframe of some random Open-Source developer on the internet.
Looking at the server, it looks incomplete. Variants do not appear to have “Examine” support and the help files do not describe all of the supported variants.
I think the type of server people are looking for is a server where one can define their own rules (or, at least your own setup and have both players agree on the rules) and move pieces the way you want to. I think play-by-mail makes more sense for Chess variants because, since the game is new, people need more time to think about the next move they will make.
Most Chess variant players like making new Chess variant rules and trying out the new variant for only a few games before moving on to the next variant. I think we’re somewhat unusual in that we would probably be happy playing different Capablanca Chess and FIDE Chess opening setups for the rest of our lives. I even stay with a given variant long enough to develop opening theory for the variant—I think Schoolbook is unique in having an opening book.
[1] In the meantime, I do run CentOS 5 in a virtual machine, mainly for software development purposes.
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I am of the opinion that criticisms against legitimate research have no real merit unless backed up by their own research. For example, can you find an opening book for Black to better defend against White’s attacks in the RMNBAKBNQR opening array? It’s one thing to assert “Joker80 doesn’t play the opening very well” (I’m not sure this is what you’re asserting; however, Joker80 was used to play all games, and Zillions was never used); however, this assertion is unsupported unless it is a claim like “Joker80 doesn’t play the RMNBAKBNQR opening very well. Black most commonly replies to 1. e4 with 1. ... e5 (Which, indeed, is the most common opening for this setup); however my research shows that Black gets much better results if he instead responds to 1. e4 with...”
Is there a reasonable Black defense with the RMNBAKBNQR array that Joker80 missed? If so, what is it?
And, yes, the Aberg setup does look to be the best setup of the Capablanca pieces.
Zillions is a general-purpose engine which is excellent for prototyping variants, but it does not play Chess all that well. I use it for basic testing to make sure a given game is sane (no forced mate in the opening, reasonable White-Black balance, not too drawish, etc.), but not for serious opening analysis.
ChessV, with some heuristics to evaluate opening moves, actually comes up with a reasonable opening book for FIDE chess. You should download and try it; I have a copy of it at samiam.org/chessv; to say it plays the opening better than Zillions is a vast understatement. It can’t find the Sicilian defense, but besides that its replies to 1. e4 in FIDE chess (when its opening book is removed) are fine; keep in mind people played FIDE chess for centuries before deciding the Sicilian was a really good reply to 1. e4.
The reason why many Chess engines designed to play FIDE Chess can’t come up with very good opening moves is because they don’t have to. It’s a lot simpler to just have a really big opening book and play moves from the opening book until a novelty is finally played.
Joker80, the engine I used (which, as it turns out, I didn’t write), actually plays the opening quite well, since it’s an engine designed to play Chess without an opening book.
Basic Chess. Variable baseline chess without drawing lots. Restrict Rooks to a and h files, and King to d or e files.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]In terms of the opening research, right now I'm researching the White win/Draw ratio of the Schoolbook setup. One concern brought up by Charles Daniel is how well Joker80 is playing the opening. Indeed, earlier I did some opening research by comparing how well Joker80 plays 15 different openings suggested by ChessV (see this posting for the openings). Joker80 was given 10 seconds to play 40 moves, and 100 games of each of the 15 openings was played (1500 games total). Here are the results:
Win: 46% Loss: 42% draw 11% Total 1389 (we played 1,500 games but only tallied games ending in a checkmate or draw)
Here, we see that the White advantage, which is 8% without any Schoolbook opening book, is only 4% when both White and Black play openings suggested by ChessV. Indeed, with the opening 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nb6, which appears to be a strong defense to 1. e4 in Schoolbook chess, we get the following results when playing at a time control of 60 seconds for 40 moves:
Win: 44% Loss: 43% draw 13% Total 204
The research I'm currently doing is the White win/loss/draw ratio when playing Schoolbook Chess at a pace of 90 seconds for 40 moves. I will have better results early next week, but here is the results I have so far:
Win: 52% Loss: 35% draw 13% Total 162
Here, we see White does a lot better when given more time to think about his move (but these results may change once I get 1,000 games or so at this slower time control).
I think the biggest conclusion we have gotten from all those 40-move-in-4-second games done with six different Capablanca opening setups is that having undefended flank pawns does not make the game an automatic win for White. It has been proposed (without empirical evidence backing the proposal) that having undefended pawns in a Capablanca opening setup strongly biases the game in White's favor, but I didn't see that at all in my experiment.
In terms of this being a popular variant, one advantage of Capablanca Chess is that there are a number of engines (Zillions, of course, but also ChessV, Joker80, TJchess10x8, etc.) that can play this variant. This allows us to do a lot of research; no Chess variant is popular enough to have tournaments with even dozens of participants, but we can simulate a huge tournament with very strong players and thousands of games played by having computer chess engines play each other over and over and over.
There seem to be two different communities of Chess Variant players: Chess Variant players who don't want to stick around with a given variant for very long; the majority of the community here is like this, which is why, for example, no one has played Schoolbook here for a while (people have since moved on to new variants). Then there's a community only interested in modest variants to Chess and analyzing those modest variants including building up an opening library and have a computer program play the variant in question as well as possible. For example, people making computer engines talk about having the engines play simple variants like Capablanca Chess in places like this forum.
Examining a game means you move pieces around on a board without the game being rated. It would be a great way for people to get a sense of what a variant is like without having to play a rated game with the variant.
There are 31 such pieces; of those 31 pieces, 16 can traverse the entire board (if the board is not a cylinder or toric board; more can traverse the entire board if it is toric depending on the board’s dimensions):
X - X - X - X X X X - X - # - - # - - # - X # X - X - X - X - X - - X - X - X X X X - X - - X - - # - - # - X # X - # - X X X X - X X - X X X X - X - X - X X - X - X - X # X X # X X # X X # X - X - X - X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X - # - X # X X # X X # X X X X - X - X - X X X XHere, an ‘X’ indicates that the piece can move one or more squares in the indicated direction, as long as the path in question is not blocked by a friendly or enemy piece. This piece can capture an enemy piece by going to the square the enemy piece is at, just like in FIDE Chess.
In the above table, the piece on the third row in the left column is the Rook, and the piece in the lower right corner is the FIDE Queen. The rest of the pieces are fairy pieces; the second piece in the second row is a rider version of Shogi’s Silver; the second piece in the fourth row is a rider version of Shogi’s Gold.
Let’s take an 8x8 board and add FIDE Chess’ pawns and king to the board, putting the pawns on the player’s second row and the King in the E file (just like in FIDE Chess). We then, for the seven remaining positions in the player’s back row, randomly choose one of the 16 above pieces. This results in about 250 million possible opening setups.
How powerful are these pieces? While I haven’t done a full analysis of these pieces, the majority of the pieces are at least as powerful as a rook. This means that White will probably have a strong advantage in the majority of setups; to compensate for this, I would implement the “Pie rule”: Player one chooses White’s first move, then player two chooses whether to play white or black.
Castling could be handled by allowing the king to, once in the game, swap pieces with another piece, as long as the king and the other piece have not yet moved.
If 250 million is not enough possible opening setups, or if people find the pieces too powerful, we can have each piece, instead of being able to move any number of unobstructed squares, randomly choose whether a piece can only move one square in a given direction, be able to move square or leap two squares in that direction, or be able to move any number of unobstructed squares in the direction. This results in 15,120 different possible pieces. If we have seven such pieces, we have some 180,660,221,412,287,006,638,080,000,000 possible opening setups.
If we insist on left-right symmetry in all aspects, we have 882 different pieces to play with. If we make the game compatible with a FIDE chess board, where the pieces representing the rooks, knights, bishops, and queens are in their FIDE opening position, there are 605,165,749,776 possible opening setups.
Have I tested these variants? Nope; all it is so far is an interesting thought experiment.
Personally, I prefer the term 'defence density' for this heuristic, since King safety is more difficult in Capablanca Chess than in FIDE Chess.
ChessV. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I could not find the download on your web page nor in the Winboard forum.
This will make Schoolbook 2010 a lot easier to implement.
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]It is.
I had my computer spend all weekend playing over 1,000 games of the Schoolbook setup giving Joker80 90 seconds to make 40 moves (each side got 90 seconds to make these 40 moves). Here are the win/loss/draw ratio for White when given all this time to make a move:
Win: 48% Loss: 39% draw 13% Total 1002
Compare this to the results we got when we play much faster 40-moves-in-4-seconds games:
Win: 48% Loss: 40% Draw: 13% Total 1006
The numbers are identical, within the +-2% margin of error because we used 1,000 games in our study.
Conclusion: Giving a game different time controls does not appear to affect the Win/Loss/Draw ratio for Joker80.
My next bit of research is whether fine-tuning the opening by hand affects the Win/Loss/Draw ratios. In other words, can we come up with a better opening book than the openings Joker80 comes up with during the game?
It looks like I can. I don't have over 1,000 games for a given opening, but my preliminary findings show that Black has about as many wins as White after 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nb6 and Black creams White after what I call the “Winther Defense”, 1. f4 c5 (named thusly because Zillions, when using a Capablanca rules file tweaked by Winther to play the opening better, came up with this defense); it looks like the tactical complications after 1. f4 c5 2. Bxc5 Qxf4+ 3. Af3 strongly favor Black.
Universal Chess. Missing description (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
FIDE pawn: Moves forward, captures diagonally forward
Shogi pawn: Moves forward, captures forward
Berolina pawn: Moves diagonally forward, captures forward
Beroshogi pawn: Moves diagonally forward, captures diagonally forward
If you want five more pawns, we can have the following fairy pawns:
Moves forward and diagonally forward, captures forward.
Moves forward and diagonally forward, captures diagonally forward.
Moves forward and diagonally forward, captures forward and diagonally forward.
Moves forward, captures forward and diagonally forward
Moves diagonally forward, captures forward and diagonally forward
OK, is that not enough types of pawns. We can add Winther’s “Scorpion Pawn” movement: Moves but doesn’t capture one square forward and two squares to the left, and one square forward and two squares to the right:
. . . . . * . . . * . . # . . . . . . . . . . . .Here ‘#’ is the pawn and ‘*’ is the squares the Scorpion move allows the pawn to move to.
This gives us 18 pawn types. If that’s not enough, we can add a move I call a “caltrop” move, which is the other two forward knight moves to a pawn:
. * . * . . . . . . . . # . . . . . . . . . . . .This gives us 36 pawn types...but the pawns are getting pretty powerful at this point. I start worrying about White having an unfair advantage when the pawns get too powerful...
Cardinal Chess. Just like orthodox Western "Mad Queen" Chess only substituting knight-bishop compound for Mad Queen. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]As an aside, what is a Ninja pawn?
Cardinal Chess. Just like orthodox Western "Mad Queen" Chess only substituting knight-bishop compound for Mad Queen. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Betza didn't use these pieces together because his goal was to make a variant using the FIDE pieces that was as strong as the FIDE army. You can't have the RN and BN with the Queen if you want to do that. However, in CWDA, Betza added the RN to the “Remarkable Rookies” army and the BN to the “Colorbound Cobblers” army, so he obviously had no problem with the pieces, just with having too many of them on the board at once. Also, look at “Almost Chess”.
Speaking of Betza, I wonder about a Capablanca variant where the knights are different; one is a Betza Crab + Ferz; the other knight is Crab + Wazir. Instead of an Archbishop, we have a Crab + Wazir + Bishop; instead of a Marshall/Cardinal, we have a Crab + Ferz + Rook. Should be about as powerful as the Capablanca army, and allows 252,000 opening setups instead of “only” 126,000 opening setups.
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]f3 Win: 51.462% Loss: 35.0877% draw 13.4503% Total 171 c4 Win: 48.5075% Loss: 38.0597% draw 13.4328% Total 134 c3 Win: 47.6923% Loss: 38.4615% draw 13.8462% Total 130 e4 Win: 46.9965% Loss: 40.636% draw 12.3675% Total 283 f4 Win: 45.6522% Loss: 43.1159% draw 11.2319% Total 276 h3 Win: 41.6667% Loss: 50% draw 8.33333% Total 12 Total Win: 47.6143% Loss: 39.8608% draw 12.5249% Total 1006Here is the same chart when we give Joker80 90 seconds to play 40 moves (per side):
j3 Win: 100% Loss: 0% draw 0% Total 2 f4 Win: 54.7945% Loss: 31.5068% draw 13.6986% Total 73 e3 Win: 53.8462% Loss: 46.1538% draw 0% Total 13 c4 Win: 48.1663% Loss: 36.6748% draw 15.1589% Total 409 f3 Win: 47.4576% Loss: 45.7627% draw 6.77966% Total 59 e4 Win: 46.9444% Loss: 40.8333% draw 12.2222% Total 360 c3 Win: 42.5926% Loss: 42.5926% draw 14.8148% Total 54 g4 Win: 36.3636% Loss: 63.6364% draw 0% Total 11 h3 Win: 31.5789% Loss: 52.6316% draw 15.7895% Total 19 b3 Win: 0% Loss: 100% draw 0% Total 1 g3 Win: 0% Loss: 100% draw 0% Total 1 Total Win: 47.505% Loss: 39.4212% draw 13.0739% Total 1002So, the question is, can Black equalize if we give him a small opening book?
It would appear he may be able to.
For example, I have had my computer play a lot of 40-moves-in-16-seconds games, starting with either 1. e4 d5 or 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nb6 (here, White can not hold on to the pawn). Here are the results:
e4-d5-exd5-Ad6 Win: 100% Loss: 0% draw 0% Total 1 e4-d5-exd5-f6 Win: 55.6604% Loss: 33.0189% draw 11.3208% Total 106 e4-d5-exd5-f5 Win: 54.1353% Loss: 37.594% draw 8.27068% Total 133 e4-d5-exd5-Nb6 Win: 45.4765% Loss: 41.9783% draw 12.5452% Total 1658 Total Win: 46.6807% Loss: 41.1486% draw 12.1707% Total 1898We can see that, with this defense, we reduce White’s advantage after playing 1. e4 from around 6.5% to around 3.5%, helping equalize the game for Black; Joker80 doesn’t do any reply besides exd5 after 1. e4 d5.
My theory is that we can find equalizing replies for Black to other White first moves in the Schoolbook opening array. For example, preliminary research suggest that the position after 1. f4 c5 strongly favors Black (but I’m putting this line of research on hold because I’m currently playing a Game Courier game with this opening).
These types of positions are actually quite rare; in the 5,000 games or so I have had my computer play to research Schoolbook, only 24 mates of this nature were found; a mate like this happens about once every 200 games.
These mates (in addition to the script that data-mines the .pgn files to find these kinds of positions) can be found here:
Dimachaer Chess. Introducing the Dimachaer, a bifurcation piece that always lands on the diagonal second leg (zrf available).[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]In terms of bifurcators, I assume we’re taling about a piece that:
- Moves in a straight line, either orthogonally (rook-like) or diagonally (bishop-line).
- Hits another piece, either friendly or enemy
- Changes direction, either 45 degrees or 90 degrees upon hitting the other piece
- Finishes its move
. . . . . 2 . . . . 2 . . 2 . . . 2 . . . 2 . . . . . 2 . . 2 X . . . 2 X 2 . . . . . X 2 . . 1 2 2 2 . . 1 . . . . 2 2 2 1 . 1 . . . . . . 1 . . . 2 . . . . # . . . . . 1 1 # 1 1 1 X . . . 1 . 1 . . . . . . 1 . . . 2 . . 1 . . . 1 2 2 2 . . 1 . . . . 2 1 . . . . 2 X . . 2 . . . 2 . . . . 2 . . . . 2 . . . 2 . 2 . . . . . 2 . . . . X 2 2 . . X . . . . . 2 X . . . 1 . . . . . 1 . . . . . . . 1 . 1 . . . . . . 1 . . . . 2 . . . # . . . . . 1 1 # 1 1 1 X . . . 1 . 1 . . . . . . 1 . . . . 2 . 1 . . . 1 . . . . . 1 . . . . . 1 . . . . . X . . . 2 . 2 . . . . 2 . . . . . 2 . . . . 2 . . . . . 2 . . . . . 2 2 2 . . X . . . . . . X . . . X . . . . . 1 . . . . . . . 1 . 1 . . . . . . 1 . . . . 2 . . . # . . . . . 1 1 # 1 1 X 2 . . . 1 . 1 . . . . . . 1 . . . . 2 . 1 . . . 1 . . . . . 1 . . . . . 1 . . . . . X . .Here, we see three types of these bifurcators:
- The piece bounces just before the other piece’s square (first row)
- The piece bounces in the middle of the other piece’s square (second row)
- The piece bounces just after the other piece’s square (third row)
- The piece can move to an empty square on the first leg of its move (the second leg is not used)
- The piece can capture on an enemy-occupied square on the first leg of its move (the second leg, again, is not used)
- The piece can move to an empty square on the second leg of its move.
- The piece can capture on an enemy-occupied square on the second leg of its move.
I’ll pull a Betza and create a notation so we can quickly describe a bifurcator. O means we start with an orthogonal move; D means we start with a diagonal move. B means we bounce just before the other piece, M means we bounce in the other piece’s square, and A means we bounce afterwords. 1m means we can end our move on the first leg, 1c means we can end our capture on the first leg, 2m means we can end our move on the second leg, and 2c means we can capture on the second leg.
OK, so where do Winther’s pieces fit in this Betza-esque scheme? Like this:
- Gladiatrix OB2m2c
- Crossrook DA1m2c
- Crossbishop OA1m2c
- Murmillo DB1m2c (also can bounce off the edge of the board)
- Secutor OB1m2c
- Provocator DB2m2c (also can bounce off the edge of the board)
- Diamachaer OB2m2c
- Sagittar DA2m2c
- Venator OA2m2c
- Laquear DB1c2m (also can bounce off the edge of the board)
- Essedar OB1c2m
- Gaul DA1c2m (not allowed to end its move in the square immediately after the second piece)
- Thraex OA1c2m (not allowed to end its move in the square immediately after the second piece)
OK, there are some other pieces that don’t fit in this scheme, but this makes a reasonable introduction to these types of pieces.
What I see with pieces like this is that all of the simple pieces a Chess-like game can have are already invented, and that we’re having to come up with some pretty convoluted moves to come up with new piece types.
The simple Chess pieces seem to be:
- Simple leapers (Such as the knight and the king) I wrote, a couple of years ago, an essay describing 31 such leapers
- Simple sliders, such as rooks, bishops, and queens. There are, as I recently posted, 16 symmetrical sliders that can traverse the entire board if the board is a bounded square; there is also the bishop and Shogi’s lance
Once we move past these simple pieces, things get complicated and the learning curve goes up. One relatively simple piece is a piece that captures differently than it moves; a piece that, say, moves like a knight or captures like a bishop.
Betza covered the “crooked rook”, “crooked bishop”, and “rose”—sliders which change their direction every square they slide.
Chinese Chess, of course, has the “Cannon”, which has inspired all kinds of pieces that leap before moving or capturing (or a combination thereof). Speaking of leaping pieces, I’m surprised no one has recently discussed having a checker’s king in Chess: A piece that moves like a Ferz, but captures by jumping over an adjacent piece, and can (optionally) capture multiple times in its move. We can, of course, have a wazir (horizontal and vertical) form of this piece, or combine it with any other chess piece.
So, yeah, it looks like pretty much any kind of piece chess can have with a simple move has been discussed here, so we’re moving on to complicated pieces that don’t seem very intuitive to me.
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Move PV ----- --- e5 73 Ng6 69 f6 40 c6 13 e6 10 d6 51. c4 e5 looks to be Black’s best reply, but 1. c4 e5 2. Bc2 is dangerous for black if not handled properly. Here are the win/lose/draw ratios for White after 1. c4 e5:
Opening moves Win Loss Draw Games played --------------- -------- -------- -------- --- 1. c4 e5 2. d3 100% 0% 0% 3 1. c4 e5 2. Bc2 53.0997% 35.0404% 11.8598% 371 1. c4 e5 2. f3 48.2456% 37.7193% 14.0351% 114 1. c4 e5 2. h3 47.619% 44.7619% 7.61905% 105Black’s win/loss/draw ratios to various replies to 2. Bc2:
Opening moves Win Loss Draw Games played ------------------- -------- -------- -------- --- 1. c4 e5 2. Bc2 a6 100% 0% 0% 2 1. c4 e5 2. Bc2 Cj6 100% 0% 0% 5 1. c4 e5 2. Bc2 Ch6 71.4286% 28.5714% 0% 7 1. c4 e5 2. Bc2 g6 58.2915% 31.1558% 10.5528% 199 1. c4 e5 2. Bc2 f6 50% 37.5% 12.5% 24 1. c4 e5 2. Bc2 Be7 48.3871% 38.7097% 12.9032% 62 1. c4 e5 2. Bc2 Ng6 42.3077% 44.2308% 13.4615% 52 1. c4 e5 2. Bc2 Ad6 26.3158% 47.3684% 26.3158% 19 1. c4 e5 2. Bc2 Ni6 0% 100% 0% 1It looks like Black gets creamed here because Joker80 often does 2. ... g6 when 2. ... Ng6 appears to give much better results (Update: Further research shows Ng6 isn’t that great for Black: c4-e5-Bc2-Ng6 Win: 50.365% Loss: 39.4161% draw 10.219% Total 274)
More research has to be done, including looking for a reasonable Black reply to 2. f3.
As an aside, I get a lot more pretty mates when I have Joker80 play at 40-moves-in-4-seconds than when I use slower time controls.
This is a question that is, by nature, a subjective impression. One person’s simple is another person’s complicated.
OK, let me try to prove myself wrong. I think one simple type of piece is a piece occasionally seen in historical Chess variants:
- The “hook mover” in Dai-Dai Shogi (and some of the other really huge Shogi variants) There are two versions of this hook mover; one that moves like a rook, then can, at any point, bend 90 degrees and continue its movement; the piece can go to any square on an empty board. There is also the “bishop” form of the hook mover that can go to any square of its color on an empty board.
We don’t have the complete rules of Dai-Dai Shogi here, but the Wikipedia is your friend; you can also play this game in Zillions (yes, Jeff Mallett deserves your $25 to register the game if you haven’t done so already)
- The “griffion” in Grande Acedrex. This piece moves out one square diagonally, then turns 45 degrees and moves any number of squares like a rook. A picture is worth a thousand words:
. . | . | . . . . | . | . . - - X . X - - . . . # . . . - - X . X - - . . | . | . . . . | . | . .
('#' is the piece, and it can move to any square marked 'X', '-', or '|'; the lines are used to show the piece moves like rook in these directions)This is, if you will, a limited subset of a hook mover; unlike a Dai-Dai Shogi hook mover, its hook rotation is 45 degrees, not 90 degrees, and it can only make the hook after moving precisely one square
. . . \ . / . . . . . . . X . . . . . . . . | . . . . \ . . . | . . . / . X - - # - - X . / . . . | . . . \ . . . . | . . . . . . . . X . . . . . . . / . \ . . .This hook mover is a variation on the Griffion; instead of starting with a diagonal move, it starts with an orthogonal move. If the piece moves more than three squares, it must bend 45 degrees on the third square it moves to, then move outward diagonally.
Here is the same piece’s move if it’s on the edge of an 8x8 board:
. . . . . . / . . . . . . / . . \ . . . / . . . . \ . / . . . . . . X . . . . . . . | . . . . / . . | . . . / . - - # - - X . .Like other sliders, this piece can have its move blocked.
How valuable is this piece? Somewhere between a rook and queen in value.
There’s also the diagonal version of this piece:
. | . . . . . | . - X . . . . . X - . . \ . . . / . . . . . \ . / . . . . . . . # . . . . . . . / . \ . . . . . / . . . \ . . - X . . . . . X - . | . . . . . | .Which is probably a little less valuable than the orthogonal version shown above.
Is this a simple piece? I’m not entirely sure. When I first saw the Griffion in, as I recall, New Rules For Classic Games (or was it Murray’s A History of Chess) I was very confused by this piece, but today it makes perfect sense to me.
We can have versions of this piece that bends after moving only square (the Griffion in the diagonal form), after two squares, after four squares, etc. We can have a version of this piece that bends 90 degrees instead of 45 degrees (the diagonal version of this piece is colorbound). We can limit the range of the piece. Etc.
Jose: Since you mentioned Ajax Capablanca Chess as a game with simple moves (add a non-capturing king move to the pieces), may I suggest Ajax Schoolbook. I should add that as a variant to the Zillions preset for Schoolbook. I really like the bishop + non-capturing Wazir piece; it nicely solves all of the headaches one has coming up with a board setup for colorbound pieces.
- Has a simple move
- Has not been, to the extent of my knowledge, thought of before
This magic piece can change movement capability by using up a move to transform itself. A Warlock rook can change into a Warlock cannon by turning the rook upside down, or vice versa. The Warlock cannon uses Korean Cannon movement: it moves as a rook after having jumped a piece. If it cannot jump then it cannot move. As such, it is somewhat weaker than a knight, but its tactical capacity is great. In any case, the Warlock cannon can always transform itself back into a Warlock rook. After the piece is transformed it must make a move before making yet another transformation. So it's not possible to stay put and make continual transformations on the same square.OK, this is something I haven’t really seen before: A piece that can, at the cost of a tempo, change its nature. We can have all kinds of pieces of this form: bishops that can become knights and vice versa, Jumping Marshalls (Korea Cannon Rook + Knight) that can become Queens, as just two examples. This is best for pieces that are strong, but don’t develop very well in the opening, or pieces that alternate between two pieces of about the same value (bishops becoming knights on an 8x8 board, or bishops becoming augmented knights on larger boards).
The only time I’ve seen something like this before is Betza’s “Weakest chess”, where a piece has to lost a tempo to go from a moving piece to a capturing piece (and vice versa). Here’s an idea for people who want a game that computers do not play well: Multi-move weakest chess!
The issue I have is that having to place bishops on opposite colors reduces the number of possible setups. There are 126,000 possible Capablanca Chess setups where the queen is to the left of the king and the bishops are on opposite colors. There are, however, 226,800 possible Capablanca Chess setups if we allow bishops to be on the same color of squares—something we can only do if we allow the bishops to shift colors.
Speaking of strong colorbound pieces, in addition to the Adjuntant (Bishop + Dabbah-Rider), there is the Sage (Camel + Bishop), and The Way of the Knight has a piece called the 'FAD' (Camel + Ferz + Alfil + Dabbah). There’s also, if you want a really powerful colorbound piece, Sage + Dabbahrider (or think of it as a Adjuntant + Camel), or even the diagonal hook mover I recently mentioned (a very ancient piece, older than Mad Queen Chess).
(Edit: 226,800, not 453,600 possible setups because the queen should be to the left of the king—we shouldn’t count mirror images)
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Here are some interesting ideas I have made public on this server (it looks like Google doesn’t index things very well here, so I’m making some public bookmarks):
- 31 short-range pieces
- The 16 basic sliders that can traverse the entire board
- The “Sage” (Camel + Bishop) piece
- A discussion of various piece ideas
- A discussion of some Capablanca opening setups, along with a little of the discussion about the “Sage” piece.
- An idea I had to have Rook + King, Knight + King, and Bishop + King on an 8x10 board After playtesting this idea, I didn’t like it: Not enough tactical fireworks
2 Queen Rocky Horror Lycanthropic Chess. Featuring pieces that automatically flip into wyrd and not so strange counterparts. (10x8, Cells: 68) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]- If you transform the pieces so you have no royal pieces on the board, you instantly lose
- If you have only one royal piece on the board, the other piece is unable to transform
Jeff Mallett seems to agree with me; in Zillions of Games, it’s somewhat difficult to program a variant with multiple royal pieces where the goal is to capture all of them (you need to add complex rules where the royal piece is off of the board until the player is at their last royal piece, at which point you put it on the board), but simple to program it so capturing any of the royal pieces win (just change the setup to put multiple kings on the board).
And oh, to be a pedantic Sheldon, while there is a transvestite in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, there is no werewolf. :)
While I’m being pedantic, pieces that change their move after being moved have been done before. This change was optional in Flip Chess/Shogi, and flipping is mandatory after every move in the 1976 game Kyoto Shogi (Wikipedia link which will work as long as some deletionist twit doesn’t succeed in deleting the article)
And, of course, there’s all the variants with rotating pieces out there; to the extent of my knowledge, the first variant with rotating chess pieces was Ploy, and, like Warlock chess, you lose a tempo when you rotate a piece (newer rotating variants have it so you rotate after moving the piece). Warlock looks to be new in the sense that the piece changes its nature that’s not merely rotating at the cost of a tempo.
This is akin to a Knightrider, but unlike a knightrider, it doesn’t hop over any squares.
A picture is worth a thousand words:
. . 1 . . . 2 . . . . . 1 . 2 . . . 8 . . 1 . 2 . . 3 . 8 8 . 1 . 3 3 . . . . 7 # 3 . . . . 7 7 . 5 . 4 4 . 7 . . 6 . 5 . . 4 . . . 6 . 5 . . . . . 6 . . . 5 . .Or on the edge of a board:
1 . . . . . . . 2 . 1 . . . . . 2 . . 1 . . . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . 2 . . . . 1 . . . 2 . . . . . 1 . 2 . . . 8 . . 1 . 2 . . 3 . 8 8 . 1 . 3 3 . . . . 8 # 3 . . .This piece is in the same general class as the crooked rook, crooked bishop, rose, and other sliders that change direction as they slide: The piece goes out one square orthogonally, then turns 45 degrees to the left or right, goes out one square diagonally, then turns 45 degrees back to go outwards orthogonally again, goes one square, turns diagonally the same direction, etc.
Another way of looking at this piece is that it’s a “bent queen”, instead of going from its origin 0 degrees, 45 degrees, 90 degrees, etc., this piece goes from its origin 22.5 degrees, 67.5 degrees, 112.5 degrees, etc. Since Chess is quantized to its squares, the move is a little more awkward-looking on the grid.
There are, of course, a lot of ways of making other pieces based on this idea. There is the same piece starting with a diagonal instead of an orthogonal move, there can be versions of this piece whose rotation from the queen’s move is not 22.5 degrees, but some other rotation. We can have a “Betza Crab” version of this piece, etc. There are the forms of this piece that are “Bent rooks” or “Bent bishops” which are not left-right symmetrical. There is the possibility of combining this piece with other leapers and sliders. And so on.
Like I said before, it looks like pretty much any simple piece a Chess Variant can have has been thought up before. Maybe it’s time to devote less energy to trying to come up with new pieces and opening setups, and more energy to coming with with ways we can develop opening theory for setups, figuring out how to make a Chess variant that comes as close as possible to having high depth, short games, no draws, and no advantage for the first player (or deciding how important each of these four factors are), and finding ways to come up with opening theory, endgame theory (which pieces can mate the king, etc.), and what not.
I’ve actually been working on opening theory for the one variant I have “officially” invented; White has about a 7% advantage and I’m trying to come up with ways Black can equalize. 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nb6 equalizes things for Black and Black has a better game after 1. f4 c5; I’ve been spending the last two weeks looking for a good reply to 1. c4 (right now, 1. c4 Mh6 looks like the most equalizing line for Black; 1. c4 e6 is refuted by 2. g4).
I personally think the Rhino makes more sense on a hexagonal board. Here is how a hex-Rhino would move:
. . . . 1 2 . . . . . . . 1 . . . . B C . . 1 2 . . 3 B B C . 1 . 3 3 4 . . B B 1 2 3 4 . . . . A # 4 . . . . . A 9 8 6 5 5 . A 9 9 . 7 . 6 5 5 9 9 . . 8 7 . . 6 . . . . 7 . . . .Here, we see the hex-Rhino (This may also be considered a hex-crooked-Rook) travels like the usual piece people use as a hex-Bishop, but stops at the squares in between, and can take two paths for each of the six directions it can go in a straight line, resulting in 12 total paths.
Speaking of Hex chess, I never liked the idea of the “bishop” as normally implemented in Hex-chess, nor the knight or the queen.
I used to play hex-based wargames with my dad when I was a kid and, in those games, there is no “diagonal”; the only movement allowed is to one of the six fully adjacent hexes; some pieces could move two, three, or more hexes, but never diagonally.
2 Queen Rocky Horror Lycanthropic Chess. Featuring pieces that automatically flip into wyrd and not so strange counterparts. (10x8, Cells: 68) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This game can be played with a real board using checkers with pictures of the piece on each side of each checker.
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Some general impressions I have gotten from this research:
- 1. c4 looks to be white’s best first move.
- 1. c4 Mh6 looks to be black’s best reply.
- Black should reply to f4 with 1. f4 c5 (The “Winther defense”) and e4 with 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nb6
This is just one of many, many possible opening setups for the Capablanca pieces—there are some 126,000 possible setups if we use this set of pieces (two each of rooks, knights and bishops, one each of the strong pieces), force the bishops to be on opposite colors, and the queen to be left of the king. There is a nearly endless land to explore with just Capablanca chess and the many, many possible setups.
But, real life is calling me and this will be my last look at Schoolbook for 2009. Well, except to finish up the game with Wolff.
As an aisde, I have 132 games where one side thought they were even or ahead, but the other side found a mating combination to win the game:
http://www.samiam.org/schoolbook/
Hey, it looks like you never telnetted in to a Chess server.
Basically, a client like xics or winboard is a pretty GUI front-end; one would telnet in to the Chess server (either with or without a GUI client). There, you could shout with other players, chat in channel 1 or any other channel, flirt with the few girls who would show up—or play chess.
It was possible to play chess on the server using crude ASCII graphics, with an ASCII diagram for the board (R=Rook, etc.) if you were using a simple telnet client and didn’t have a graphical client—I even played ICS chess using dumb terminals back in the day, before the big mid-1990s FICS-ICC split.
The clients came later, allowing people to have an attractive looking board to play chess on their screen. There was also an ICS-like server for people playing Chinese chess, one for people playing Go, and I think even one for Shogi.
If you have a telnet client around, telnet in to your server and see what it’s like. Some basic commands:
- help RTFM is easy on the FICS server.
- match player, where player is the player you wish to play
- examine examine a game already played
The help command should summarize the changes done, or point to a help topic that explains stuff like the variant ICS server always using style 12, moves needing to always be entered in c2c4 format, examine being broken, and what not.
There’s a lot of cruft in the FICS client from the days when a lot of people didn’t have chess clients—this was back when a lot of people didn’t have computers at home (a decent computer cost $2000), and installing game software on shared lab computers was problematic. Cleaning up this cruft is understandable but should be documented to reset the expectations of us who do remember the old-school FICS client.
Carrera's Chess. Large chess variant from 17th century Italy. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The best way to really study the opening of a given chess variant is to have a lot of games played with said variant, and analyze how the games went. Since no chess variant has traditionally had the popularity to have enough games played to say anything meaningful about the variant’s opening, H.G.Muller suggested having a chess engine play thousands of games with a given variant to get a sense of the opening.
After some 30,000 Schoolbook games, I got two significant pieces of data from all this simulation:
- Some strong black replies to certain opening moves by white. 1. f4 c5 looks good for black, and 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nb6 looks to equalize. It was somewhat problematic to find a fully satisfying reply to 1. c4, and, indeed, 20,000 of the games were played to see how to minimize black’s problems after white makes this move; I finally settled on 1. c4 Mh6. One line of research I was not able to complete in the timeframe I allocated this project was to see if black had a reasonable reply to minimize his problems after 1. c4 e6 2. g4 (1. c4 e6 2. Bc2 f5 equalizes for black, but we can not depend on white cooperating so); I was not able to find a fully satisfying reply for black.
- Over 100 mating positions, which can be downloaded and looked at in Winboard; go to http://samiam.org/schoolbook to download them. I hope to one day make an inexpensive book with nothing but Schoolbook mating problems, a la Reinfeld’s classic 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate (without the tactical errors the original book had)
The nice thing about the technological age and the ready availability of powerful home computers (did you know that an inexpensive netbook has as much computational power as a then start-of-the-art Cray XMP from 1984?) is that we can research information that previous generations could never dream of. I would like to thank H. G. Muller for making all of the software freely available so I could do a meaningful in-depth study of a chess variant. Indeed, I have coined 1. c4 in Schoolbook the “Muller attack” since it was his software that first showed me how powerful this line is for white.
Grande Acedrex. A large variant from 13th century Europe. (12x12, Cells: 144) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Also, it’s rather arrogant to take your dislike and Winther’s dislike of Capa variants and conclude from that that all modern chess variant inventors dislike these variants. Do you have evidence to back up your claim that these variants are uniformly disliked? If these variants were so disliked by modern inventors, why are there so many of these different opening setups using these pieces and board out there to play?
I wonder how strong this dislike of Capa really is with you. After all, Winther has made more than one Zillions preset that can play Capablanca chess, and I remember a couple of enjoyable games of Schoolbook chess with you.
OK, I think we should agree to disagree about Capablanca/Carrera chess’ value as a variant, well except to point out it has, short of regional variants like Shogi and Chinese Chess, the most computer engine support of any variant; it’s one of the few variants where I can readily have, after a couple of weeks, some 30,000 games played with a given array to study its opening. One thing I wish Jeff Mallett added to Zillions was the ability to have the engine automatically play hundreds or thousands of games at a given engine strength/time control, so more variants could be better studied.
So, a question: What is your favorite variant right now? What do you like about the variant in question?
The biggest issue I see with giving Joker80 support for this piece is properly evaluating the piece, and having it possible to have the pawn promote to this piece—is there a way we can give Winboard a subset of pieces which we only allow the pawn to promote to?
Given a setup where we have the two rooks in the corners, the king on the F file, two bishops on opposite colors, two Adjutants on opposite colors, two knights, and the queen, we have 216 possible setups.
One issue I have with the Adjutant on a 10x8 board is that there’s a lot of smothered mating threats in the opening. For example, in the RANBQKBNAR array (A = Adjutant), black can threaten Af4# by opening with 1. h4. Black’s only reasonable reply to this is 1. h4 e5; after 1. h4 Ng6 2. h5 Black loses his knight; 1. h4 c5 2. Axb8 Rxb8 and Black can no longer castle on the queenside; 1. h4 g6 2. hxg5 and Black loses a pawn; 1. h4 f5 2. Af4+ and Black loses castling privileges; so that leaves us with 1. h4 e5 2. Nd3 and now Black is probably best doing a Slav-style defense with 2. ... d6, though 2. ... Bxh4 also looks interesting. This Slav-style defense also works against other White threats like 1. h4 e5 2. f4 d6.
When I investigated six different Capablanca setups to see which one was most balanced for White, the one setup with a first-move mating threat scored really poorly; being fifth place out of six (White had a really strong advantage). We can also consider using the RBNAQKANBR array, which doesn’t have any first-move mating threats. Then again, it’s an open question whether RANBQKBNAR is better for white than RBNAQKANBR, or what the most balanced Adjutant array is.
http://polgarstarchess.blogspot.com/Some general points:
- Small star shaped hexagonal board with 37 hexes
- Doesn’t have the “diagonal” movement most hex variants use, with the exception of the Knight
- The rook is a lance that can only move forwards and backwards
- The bishop is not colorbound
- The game has free setup of the pieces, a la “Pre Chess”
- The queen moves like the rook in most hex chess variants
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You can even have mating (Sex! Can we say that on the Chess Variants site?): Two sets of known piece values can mate and the resulting piece values will be an average of the piece values of the two 'mates' (with some randomization; the 'child''s piece values will be a random mix of the two 'parents' piece values).
I could do it myself, but I need a chess variant engine that I can set, from the command line, white's and black's values of the pieces independently, and then have the variant play itself a game of the chess variant.
- Sam