When I was in college, a Monopoly game appeared on the DEC-10. Playing that for a while completely ruined the game for me. Then someone wrote a bot to play ADVENT, which ruined that, too. My ability to play chess declined precipitously after I learned how to program, because while thinking of my next move I'd always digress into how to design a program to do the work for me. I originally wrote the Empire game because…
Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence
61–70 of 139 posts
Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence
#62Question for those knowledgeable on AI: what sort of game would be easy for a human to understand, but difficult or impossible for a computer to play or easily defeat humans? I imagine one based purely on randomness, like dice, would be one. I remember reading somewhere that languages like Finnish and Hungarian are difficult for computers to parse, [1] due to their agglutinative grammatical structure. Not sure if tha…
Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence
#63When I was in college, a Monopoly game appeared on the DEC-10. Playing that for a while completely ruined the game for me. Then someone wrote a bot to play ADVENT, which ruined that, too. My ability to play chess declined precipitously after I learned how to program, because while thinking of my next move I'd always digress into how to design a program to do the work for me. I originally wrote the Empire game because…
Considering the power of most portable devices these days have you considered revisiting Empire for an IOS or Android version?
Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence
#64When I was in college, a Monopoly game appeared on the DEC-10. Playing that for a while completely ruined the game for me. Then someone wrote a bot to play ADVENT, which ruined that, too. My ability to play chess declined precipitously after I learned how to program, because while thinking of my next move I'd always digress into how to design a program to do the work for me. I originally wrote the Empire game because…
Walter, your D source code link on classicempire.com fails with a permission error. Kudos to you for creating what Wikipedia credits as (according to one ranking in 1996) the 8th most popular game of all time. Considering the power of most portable devices these days have you considered revisiting Empire for an IOS or Android version?
Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence
#65It's true that the highest levels of play include teams of researchers and computers that develop 30+ move preparation, but what we're also seeing as a result of that are games that are more precise, which IMO is a fundamental component of chess "beauty". Some notable games that were deemed "beautiful" in the past are now seen as less-beautiful as it became apparent that play was suboptimal. Chess beauty now is less about flashy combinations and more about qualities of a position and reverse engineering the "logic" behind certain AI moves, which is still great but admittedly requires more of an investment on learning the game than a spectator might care about.
That framing, though, leaves out the massive benefit that AI has had in training and improving new players. It used to be that you needed to hire a chess master to play against and learn from in order to improve. Now your phone can easily give you a challenge of master-level strength, as well as analyze your games over the board to look for improvements.
Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly disagree with the assertion that chess is a "close to solved game" in human OTB play in particular. Top GMs currently will probably score 0/12 against Leela/Stockfish. We see innovations frequently in recent years as we learn from engines themselves, h4/h5 pushes as a simple example, but also in terms of style like favoring rapid development and attacking play. Yes, draws are frequent but that doesn't mean…
> I strongly disagree with the assertion that chess is a "close to solved game" in human OTB play in particular. I meant 90min +30mins classical format. It really is stale and boring to watch. And it seems like its mainly a memory game with some meta counter preparations pre-tournament. Where you develop and memorize lines to counter your opponent. That's what I meant by "close to solved game" - as both players are a…
Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence
#67Question for those knowledgeable on AI: what sort of game would be easy for a human to understand, but difficult or impossible for a computer to play or easily defeat humans? I imagine one based purely on randomness, like dice, would be one. I remember reading somewhere that languages like Finnish and Hungarian are difficult for computers to parse, [1] due to their agglutinative grammatical structure. Not sure if tha…
I actually expect computers to do much better on a game with a lot of randomness, since it then becomes statistics. Genres that would be difficult: - any game based on recognizing images (the first example that pops in my mind is codenames) - social deduction like werewolf
Pictionary might be harder.
Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bridge (the cards game) has seen a lot of research over the past decades without the bots ever becoming "world class good". Of course you could argue that it is a difficult game for humans to understand as well =) So it might not fit exactly what you prompted for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_bridge
That's because the AI isn't allowed to cheat. The skill of "world class" bridge play mainly lies in creative ways to cheat.
Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence
#69There are promising chess variants where all draws are eliminated: no black castling or no black short-castling Armageddon (draws are counted as wins for black). I wish they would test them instead of their picks - they are still chess unlike some variants they tested, which are probably too radical if you want to attract current chess players.
Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I strongly disagree with the assertion that chess is a "close to solved game" in human OTB play in particular. I meant 90min +30mins classical format. It really is stale and boring to watch. And it seems like its mainly a memory game with some meta counter preparations pre-tournament. Where you develop and memorize lines to counter your opponent. That's what I meant by "close to solved game" - as both players are a…
Slow chess is not solved by any human; it's broken. It's dead-ended because some better players avoid aggression so they can play short-time tiebreakers instead.