Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected?

#31

Post by aaron_seattle » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 5:42 AM UTC

Here's a variant my 8 year-old niece invented, and it has some great playability:

normal rules, except each side makes two turns in a row.

Constraint: the second move cannot logically depend on the first move in any way.

We've played a few dozen games this way. Really opens up some interesting possibilities.

Re: Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected?

#32

Post by jmgao » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 5:44 AM UTC

breuleux wrote: post #14

I had an idea for a chess variant recently that I haven't had time to test yet (but maybe it already exists?): it's exactly the same as normal chess, except on your turn you can move any piece, black or white, even your opponent's king (God chess?) You still have to eliminate the other king, and a piece can still only take pieces of the opposed color, obviously. I suppose it very well might turn out to be completely…

This seems like it'd degenerate into "pawn moves only", since you can immediately undo any other move.

Re: Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected?

#33

Post by ramshorns » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 5:51 AM UTC

I think a sort of reversed drop chess would be interesting: start with just a king each, and each turn you can either make a normal move or place one of your fifteen other pieces on its starting square.

Re: Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected?

#34

Post by ketzo » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 5:59 AM UTC

aaron_seattle wrote: post #31

Here's a variant my 8 year-old niece invented, and it has some great playability: normal rules, except each side makes two turns in a row. Constraint: the second move cannot logically depend on the first move in any way. We've played a few dozen games this way. Really opens up some interesting possibilities.

That sounds so fun. Honestly, I wonder how you could enforce that on more experienced chess players; is there a way to make a second move "forgetting" what you did first?

Re: Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected?

#35

Post by breuleux » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 6:02 AM UTC

jmgao wrote: post #32

breuleux wrote: post #14

I had an idea for a chess variant recently that I haven't had time to test yet (but maybe it already exists?): it's exactly the same as normal chess, except on your turn you can move any piece, black or white, even your opponent's king (God chess?) You still have to eliminate the other king, and a piece can still only take pieces of the opposed color, obviously. I suppose it very well might turn out to be completely…

This seems like it'd degenerate into "pawn moves only", since you can immediately undo any other move.

Captures cannot be undone either, but yes, that might be a problem. Go solves it with the ko/superko rule that states it is illegal to move in such a way to reproduce a previous configuration of the board, and I think the same rule would be relevant here.

Edit: another simple solution (with interesting strategic implications) could be to forbid moving the same piece twice in a row.

Re: Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected?

#36

Post by vaniver » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 6:07 AM UTC

ketzo wrote: post #34

aaron_seattle wrote: post #31

Here's a variant my 8 year-old niece invented, and it has some great playability: normal rules, except each side makes two turns in a row. Constraint: the second move cannot logically depend on the first move in any way. We've played a few dozen games this way. Really opens up some interesting possibilities.

That sounds so fun. Honestly, I wonder how you could enforce that on more experienced chess players; is there a way to make a second move "forgetting" what you did first?

"Logically depend" has an easy interpretation: the second move must be also be valid if performed before the first move. [You could do a harder variant where both moves must be legal simultaneously.]

Re: Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected?

#37

Post by ajkjk » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 6:07 AM UTC

ketzo wrote: post #34

aaron_seattle wrote: post #31

Here's a variant my 8 year-old niece invented, and it has some great playability: normal rules, except each side makes two turns in a row. Constraint: the second move cannot logically depend on the first move in any way. We've played a few dozen games this way. Really opens up some interesting possibilities.

That sounds so fun. Honestly, I wonder how you could enforce that on more experienced chess players; is there a way to make a second move "forgetting" what you did first?

I assume it just means that, for instance, you can't move the same piece twice, or for the second move to one only legal once the first occurs.

Re: Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected?

#38

Post by mikk_w » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 6:11 AM UTC

aaron_seattle wrote: post #31

Here's a variant my 8 year-old niece invented, and it has some great playability: normal rules, except each side makes two turns in a row. Constraint: the second move cannot logically depend on the first move in any way. We've played a few dozen games this way. Really opens up some interesting possibilities.

This is already a known variant (modulo the constraint on the second move not relying on the first). Best way to play it is that the white's first turn is only one move, then black starts with the first double move - this is the 12* protocol (first implemented in a game called Connect6), and it practically eliminates any first move advantage

Re: Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected?

#39

Post by mikk_w » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 6:25 AM UTC

Imnimo wrote: post #2

DeepMind and Kramnik had an interesting paper a few months back exploring possible chess variants: https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.04374 The basic idea is to train AlphaZero on proposed variants, and look for ones that have fewer draws and a smaller advantage for white.

I'm excited to see this. It reminds me of a paper by Cameron Browne (http://ccg.doc.gold.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/browne_...), which does similarly, but using less advanced technology. While the approach was janky in some ways, the game that the system invented, Yavalath, has received some praise for being an interesting and compelling take on the n-in-a-row genre.

I've been dreaming of doing similar with an alpha-type system, and so I look forward to reading this paper.

Edit: After skimming it, it doesn't look like they're going the distance like Browne did. Browne had the computer evolve games that the AI would rate ideally, while the DeepMind paper only has the computer consider a handful of pre-selected variants. I don't anticipate it would have been much extra work to evolve games, and I would have found it much more interesting.

Re: Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected?

#40

Post by mikk_w » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 6:28 AM UTC

jmgao wrote: post #32

breuleux wrote: post #14

I had an idea for a chess variant recently that I haven't had time to test yet (but maybe it already exists?): it's exactly the same as normal chess, except on your turn you can move any piece, black or white, even your opponent's king (God chess?) You still have to eliminate the other king, and a piece can still only take pieces of the opposed color, obviously. I suppose it very well might turn out to be completely…

This seems like it'd degenerate into "pawn moves only", since you can immediately undo any other move.

The best way to solve this is to say that you can't move a piece right back to where it just came from, like the ko rule in Go. As for superko, I think the threefold rule works just fine.