Live data from Hacker News

Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

wired.com

61–70 of 139 posts

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#61

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…

Empire was fantastic! I whiled away many a computer lab hour on it with some friends. It was probably Empire Deluxe for DOS that I played. I was blown away by how fun it was. Thank you for the fond memories!

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#62

Question 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…

Maybe Diplomacy ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#63

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…

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

#64

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…

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?

One critic's 8th best, as of 1996, not 8th most popular.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#65
An important piece of context here is that making a living by playing chess competitively is close to nil, so many even top players like Kramnik end up taking consulting/PR jobs like this in order to pay the bills. I have a hard time believing Kramnik actually believes (or said directly) that AI ruined chess. My read is that he's not really promoting changes to the rules of chess as much as he's trying to build support for new types of chess variants.

It'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

#66
post #48

Earlier 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…

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.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#67

Question 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

Codenames is easyfor an all-computer team; it's simply a word vector problem. There are already AIs published.

Pictionary might be harder.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#68

Earlier 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.

I don’t know much bridge so please correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that “cheating” basically applying steganography to game moves? It’s not like touching your ear at the right time or some other kind of back channel. It’s all represented by game moves. That sounds tractable for an algorithm.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#69
post #17

There 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.

Draws aren't something that need to be eliminated. There are beautiful draws. Only issue is when draws become too easy (for varying definition of easy). Even today, & even for computers, draws are not too easy. But they are getting easier

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#70
post #66

Earlier 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.

agreed - 'solved' is wrong term. Maybe peaked to the point top players are almost equal.
Post reply on HN