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What is 5D chess?

en.chessbase.com

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Re: What is 5D chess?

#91

From all the descriptions, this is actually 4D, no? Normal chess is 2 dimensions, plus you have time dimension (3D), plus you have parallel timelines - that always go just one dimension So it's 4D and not 5D? edit: yeah it's actually "just" 4D, from the explainer here https://imgur.com/a/XyRJmuh

They say the a 3rd dimension is unused so yeah I don’t understand why they didn’t just call it 4D chess.

Re: What is 5D chess?

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose you would have to avoid the king escaping to another timeline?

You do , which is why it ends up being easier to attack kings in the past. Because you can't change the past, only create new timelines, attacking a king from any previous board state means that the attacking piece must be captured.

does this means that attacking the starting king position will always put the king in check of the very first board? but, he can't really escape that

Re: What is 5D chess?

#93
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends in real life you always have a 3D chess board (+ time dimension) and in some chess UIs you have the option to get a 3D board rendered, like in chessbase https://de.chessbase.com/Portals/All/2017/_eng/products/frit...

But you actually only play the game in two dimensions, because the pieces cannot move up or down. Normal chess is a game happening on a 2D plane whether or not the representation of the board and pieces is 2D or 3D.

No, because that again depends on the representation. You can store the information of moves and chess position in 1D. As for example, two players can play a game of chess just by exchanging moves via morse code.

Re: What is 5D chess?

#94
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that at the beginning and end of each move, every piece has a specific coordinate in a 2D space, but it is still nice to imagine that knights' moves (and castling) involve travelling through a third spatial dimension. And yes, the pieces themselves are conventionally thought of as volumes in 3D space rather than areas of a 2D plane.

There’s nothing wrong with defining the 2D world such that knights can pass through intermediate pieces or can simply teleport to a new location.

Yes, but to maintain the conceit of chess being like a battlefield, it is nicer to think of knight pieces as being jumping cavalry (however unrealistic that is) rather than ghosts or owning a portal gun.

I suppose the actually intended analogy is that by riding a horse, the character is more evasive and can slip past another unit without being blocked. Also, I suppose that rooks must have wheels on, and a door that a king can only walk through in rare circumstances.

Re: What is 5D chess?

#95
post #88
post #55

'From my experience playing a few games on it against decently strong opponents has been that at high levels it becomes "Chess, but it's much much easier to checkmate, and 2~3 times a game some time travel shenanigans happen." The main reason for that is time traveling and dimension hoping come at a tempo disadvantage. When you create a new timeline, you make 1 move, but give your opponent 2 moves. You used your turn…

> You used your turn in the present, and created a new board where it's their turn in the past. Doesn't it depend on the piece you use? Knights and Bishops seems to be able to move on the board and move back in time at the same time.

Pieces have the same movement rules as normal chess. A knight for instance moves 3 spaces along one axis, and 1 space along another axis. If you time travel you're essentially sacrificing one of those spatial moves for a temporal move. For example 2 spaces back in time and 1 forward. So while it's not entirely giving up a move it's fairly close, especially for pieces that only move along a single axis at a time.

Re: What is 5D chess?

#96
post #89

I bought this game a few weeks ago with a friend and we jumped in without any prior knowledge about the game or how it worked. After about 3 hours we were finally starting to understand the basic principles and I have to say wow, it's an absolute blast to play. Many hours in now we've finally begun developing our own strategies and it's absolutely insane. I have to say that 5D Chess is one of the most creative and in…

What is your opinion on how into the chess one needs to be to get a similar kind of experience out of the 5D chess? Asking as a casual hobby player.

I'd say you need to be comfortable with how the rules of chess work, but you don't need to be a chess player. The time travel rules even out the playing field for amateurs who play against actual chess players.

Re: What is 5D chess?

#97
post #36
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only 4D. I believe they called it 5D chess because they didn't want people to interpret this as 3D chess + time. If I recall correctly, the tutorial mentions at some point that the 5th dimension is "unused".

It would have been nice if 4D only ever meant four spatial dimensions, and then we'd have (3+1)D for three spatial dimensions and a time dimension. (And (2+2)D for two spatial and two time dimensions :-))

[deleted]

Re: What is 5D chess?

#98
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do , which is why it ends up being easier to attack kings in the past. Because you can't change the past, only create new timelines, attacking a king from any previous board state means that the attacking piece must be captured.

does this means that attacking the starting king position will always put the king in check of the very first board? but, he can't really escape that

Yes, but it's not that easy. Pieces still make threats according to their movement rules, whether through time or space.

For example, if your king moves from its square and an enemy rook attacks its starting position (rooks can move any number of squares in any one direction), then it's mate unless you can take the rook. However, if in the intervening time, another piece lands on the same spot, then it will block subsequent rook checks through time on that square.

Re: What is 5D chess?

#99
post #55

'From my experience playing a few games on it against decently strong opponents has been that at high levels it becomes "Chess, but it's much much easier to checkmate, and 2~3 times a game some time travel shenanigans happen." The main reason for that is time traveling and dimension hoping come at a tempo disadvantage. When you create a new timeline, you make 1 move, but give your opponent 2 moves. You used your turn…

I find that once I start time traveling (say 12 moves in) you should be aiming to win or lose before you get back there.

I.e. you only have the tempo disadvantage once the present has caught up to where you traveled from

Re: What is 5D chess?

#100

I always thought a cool chess variant would be quantum chess where you can move a piece to more than one square and assign a probability to each position. Your opponent could do the same. But I never worked out how it could work from there.

Wouldn't the optimal strategy be to just pick the best move in your opinion and assign 100% probability to it? That way it would just turn back into regular chess.

Hmm you are right. This brings to questiom why in real life we don't tend to go all in on the best bet.
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