71–80 of 116 posts
It would be interesting to see if there is anything which would let black start on equal terms.
Hmm? Chess is already very drawish at the top level, a specific goal that they highlight in this paper is to unbalance the game.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is only one way to fix chess and it's called Go. Of course, this isn't exactly chess anymore but like any design decision there are no perf- Wait a minute, Go is perfect. If we forget about ko rules.
What's wrong with ko rules? I think it's a simple rule and ko fights are an interesting part of go.
The so-called superko rule simply states that no previous position can be repeated, which seems preferable.
I was hoping that it would help find the changes in rules that would at the same time 1) result in more even game between white and black and 2) result in fewer draws. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell all the alterations of rules that they explored turned out worse than classical chess on at least one of those criteria.
Are those goals not somewhat contradictory? How would a more even game not lead to more draws instead of fewer? Unless the new rules punish slight mistakes much more severely, perhaps? But that would lead to other issues in the balance and feel of the game.
I feel compelled to say that, Coronavirus shenanigans aside, Wijk an Zee has just finished and was a fantastic event with many interesting and decisive games. Classical chess does not need fixing, even at the highest level. It’s fun that we can run these experiments though. I’d love to test out some of the variants a friend and I came up with! One of my favourites was starting with all the pieces off the board and a…
Yes Tata Steel tournament was great, I just don't think we need variants like Fischer random chess. There is still lot to explore in classical chess. Anyway, how is the first variant you described called? (one starting with empty board). My favourite is crazychess, lot of tactical fun there.
However exploring chess variants is fun. Gary Kasparov very much enjoyed his random chess tournament as did spectators. What is good can be made better.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in top 1% of rapid chess players on lichess, and I hardly ever see a draw. If top 100 or 500 players on the whole planet have this problem, well, they can try some other game, probably, I don't mind.
You can't reach top 1% without being very good at taking advantage of time pressure, though, or am I wrong? The term rapid chess includes many time controls - both with and without increment, so I'm not sure how to understand you.
And seriously speaking, the more time given, the higher the probability of a draw: games are usually won or lost because of blunders. If you have time to evaluate all moves and play very patiently, and your opponent does the same, draw is the likely result. But playing this way is boring.
I wonder if there’s any way for AlphaZero to estimate how interesting/fun a variant is.
What about "Progressive chess"? White makes 1 move; black makes 2; white makes 3; etc.
I wonder if there’s any way for AlphaZero to estimate how interesting/fun a variant is.
Indeed. Depth and balance are part of a fun astract, and those are objective enough to be analyzed this way.
I bet it could come up with some interesting card games as well.
I think this can be done with a very simple rule change:
In a draw, instead of a both players receiving half a point, one player will randomly receive a full point. The expected value of a draw is still the same (0.5 points per draw) but I think it does change the psychology of it.
