101–108 of 108 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A players mental representation of the game is already that (and you use this mental representation to predict future outcomes). If you add probabilistic moves, the optimal way to play would be to give each alternative move the same weight (ie probability) that you think it will win you the game. You would pull this probability out of your mental representation. Something like, "I think this is the best move, but thi…
Yes exactly what I was thinking, it is as if you mentally picture and weight each move, but what if you could actually represent that somehow and play out all the variations of a game like a multiverse. Sometimes when I play against a computer I will try different things by trying something then going back using undo, but then I wonder, wait maybe the other fork would have worked out, etc. This way you could have man…
The game starts with each player having 50 points "in the bank". In addition to moving normally, players may opt to move and split the timeline. If they split, they choose how many points to dedicate to the new timeline, which are put in its bank, distributed evenly between both players. Points must be whole numbers and each timeline must have at least 2 (max 50 timelines). Play continues normally on the original timeline, and they may opt to split again, if they have the points.
When a given timeline is played to checkmate, the winner secures all of their own and their opponent's points from that timeline. In the case of a tie, points are split evenly. First person to secure over 50 points wins.
The game keeps track of the history in each timeline. If one timeline's board enters a state that already occurred in a different board's history, both players are asked whether they'd like to merge timelines, in which case the banks from each timeline are combined and play continues on the board that is farther in the future.
The UI allows players to switch which timeline they are looking at freely So, both players can be playing at once, in different timelines. Initial implementation can show a single board at a time, a number showing which timeline you're viewing, how many points each player has banked in that timeline, and arrows for moving between timelines. Should be pretty easy to add, actually.
Competitive variant is timed. There is a single clock for each player, which counts down by the sum of all timelines in which it is their turn, scaled down by the % of total remaining points in that timeline.
That is, say we're playing 10+10 and there are currently two timelines, one with 20 points and one with 80. It's my turn in the 80 point timeline and yours in the 20 point timeline. While we wait here, my clock ticks down by .8 seconds per second, and yours by .2. Then I play. I gain +8 seconds, and my timer stops while yours starts ticking at full speed.
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You'll note this isn't quite the original idea; a faithful implementation of that would have a shared pot of points that each player can split arbitrarily (including fractions of a point). But I didn't want to allow infinite splitting because that would make the game unplayably long (or, in timed variants, might lead to optimal strategies of overwhelming your opponent with many splits). And if infinite splitting is not allowed, then I don't want to allow one player to do all the splitting, that's no fun for the opponent.
The one thing I don't like is that this allows the stronger player to reliably win by never splitting and just winning the original board, since it will always have >50 points. This is probably fixable, not going to spend more time thinking about it right now though; this post has taken long enough :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the chess board is 2d, how does the Knight move, doesn't it need the third dimension to go "over" other pieces? I assume, graphics notwithstanding, the board is logically represented in 3 dimensions.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm, but anyways: obviously an actual chessboard is indeed 3d - as are all physical objects in our world. Yet a chessboard is effectively a 2d space: any piece position is completely defined by a row and a column.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm you are right. This brings to questiom why in real life we don't tend to go all in on the best bet.
There's no uncertainty in chess. It's a game of perfect information and you can understand the rules 100%
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A players mental representation of the game is already that (and you use this mental representation to predict future outcomes). If you add probabilistic moves, the optimal way to play would be to give each alternative move the same weight (ie probability) that you think it will win you the game. You would pull this probability out of your mental representation. Something like, "I think this is the best move, but thi…
Yes exactly what I was thinking, it is as if you mentally picture and weight each move, but what if you could actually represent that somehow and play out all the variations of a game like a multiverse. Sometimes when I play against a computer I will try different things by trying something then going back using undo, but then I wonder, wait maybe the other fork would have worked out, etc. This way you could have man…
for extra fun if one board gets to a position that another board already had, the tree could be merged again.
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.
There's a quantum chess game on Steam, titled Quantum Chess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no uncertainty in chess. It's a game of perfect information and you can understand the rules 100%
There absolutely is uncertainty in chess. Or do you know with certainty that you will win before the game starts?
There exists some optimal play for both white and black, we don't know what it is yet, but someday we might and then chess would be truly solved like tic tac toe.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There absolutely is uncertainty in chess. Or do you know with certainty that you will win before the game starts?
There is uncertainty about which moves are best, but no uncertainty about what the state of the board is or what will happen when any move is played. There exists some optimal play for both white and black, we don't know what it is yet, but someday we might and then chess would be truly solved like tic tac toe.