The Kilobyte’s Gambit • Hacker News Board

Re: The Kilobyte’s Gambit

#41

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 11:38 PM UTC

strken wrote: post #39

GCA10 wrote: post #32

Nice work! I'm about 1850 in Lichess blitz, and it played at the level of an earnest 12 year old, which is actually meant as a compliment. It got crazy with its kingside pawns in the opening (no book knowledge), lost material pretty steadily and was checkmated down a queen, bishop and two pawns by move 25. But it developed some pieces sensibly, made obvious recaptures and was not reckless about king safety. It avoide…

For those of us who have no idea how to play chess, what level does an earnest 12 year old play at?

[deleted]

Re: The Kilobyte’s Gambit

#42

Post by winter_squirrel » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 11:41 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #25

If the engine is well separated from the UI it would be neat to have a simple version using the Unicode chess set. Regardless, this is so cool.

I think that 90% of the difficulty of beating this engine is avoiding moving the wrong pieces haha

Re: The Kilobyte’s Gambit

#43

Post by TMWNN » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 11:42 PM UTC

Highly relevant: 1K ZX Chess (1982 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess ), a full chess AI + graphical UI for ZX81 in 672 bytes.

Re: The Kilobyte’s Gambit

#44

Post by joshuamorton » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 11:42 PM UTC

I'm about 1600 lichess, and this was a pretty easy conversion for me. It started by moving the a and h pawns in response to 1e4, which let me get center control and some advantageous pawn pickups.

Second game I got threefold while down a rook in a completely lost position (which I'll blame in part on the graphics, but was mostly me blundering).

Re: The Kilobyte’s Gambit

#45

Post by The_rationalist » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 11:44 PM UTC

If I remember correctly the size of DNA is ~100MB

Re: The Kilobyte’s Gambit

#46

Post by flatiron » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 11:49 PM UTC

WalterGR wrote: post #4

If you’re into retro CGA-like graphics, you should check the link even if you’re not into chess. It’s really quite well done.

The pieces could be a little dissimilar but I agree. Amazon throw back.

Re: The Kilobyte’s Gambit

#47

Post by jamesgreenleaf » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 11:49 PM UTC

This was surprisingly hard for such a small program. I haven't played chess in a long time, but was able to beat it on the first try, after dancing around the computer's very irritating queen for a while.

Re: The Kilobyte’s Gambit

#48

Post by taftster » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 11:52 PM UTC

My problem with this is that the colors make it hard to see the board. I get caught off by missing a long attack vector or a simple exchange.

But this is overall an amazing accomplishment. I've played several good games with it so far.

Re: The Kilobyte’s Gambit

#49

Post by nullserver » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 11:53 PM UTC

strken wrote: post #39

GCA10 wrote: post #32

Nice work! I'm about 1850 in Lichess blitz, and it played at the level of an earnest 12 year old, which is actually meant as a compliment. It got crazy with its kingside pawns in the opening (no book knowledge), lost material pretty steadily and was checkmated down a queen, bishop and two pawns by move 25. But it developed some pieces sensibly, made obvious recaptures and was not reckless about king safety. It avoide…

For those of us who have no idea how to play chess, what level does an earnest 12 year old play at?

Was extremely good at 12. But my dad who thought himself good stopped playing after I won a game by taking everything and losing none. I recall seeking so many possibilities, now I stink at it.

Re: The Kilobyte’s Gambit

#50

Post by dwohnitmok » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 11:55 PM UTC

mattround wrote: post #19

bschne wrote: post #14

I loved this footnote: "NB: if puzzled by a pawn move, please check for en passant before reporting a bug"

I added it out of desperation after around 100 people on reddit claimed the black pawns are "cheating".

Did it help? Or do people still complain about it?