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Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top engine move is forbidden

humanchess.abcd.party

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Re: Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top engine move is forbidden

#181

Post by EricMausler »

sebstefan wrote: post #49

It's a cool concept but the first naive thought that comes to mind for me is that white could just easily dominate by taking advantage of the fact that taking a queen is almost always the top engine move. So just by maintaining relative king safety on white's side, you just open your queen early and make sure that every move there onwards hangs your queen in some fashion. It's very easy to hang a queen. You just have…

I had a similar naive thought, but it doesnt resolve easily. For starters, Black can do the same thing just a move behind.

Second, if you ever hang your queen two ways at once - one of them could be a less optimal take (-5 is not as good as -8)

Third, whoever is a move ahead in a race of taking pieces will be the first to run out of weak pieces to take. Their available move pool is shrinking faster. Not sure how it would play out, black would need to cater to it by removing defenders and hanging pieces of their own, etc.

That said, first move advantage does seem strong still due to how forcing a queen can be. An example would be 1.e4..e5 2.Qh5..d5 3.Qxf7#

Re: Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top engine move is forbidden

#182

Post by EricMausler »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #121
remus wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could get very meta if you had a chess engine that knows how to play human chess!

That was my thought too. Does the engine know that the other player is forbidden to play the top engine move on the next turn? Then you can't just do something like c3 Nf6 Qa4 e5 Qe4!? to hang the queen in the center, knowing that Nxe4 is prohibited, because the strongest move for white if Nxe4 is prohibited would have been Qe4!

Any move the human chess engine makes would be losing by definition if it is also used as the bench mark.

Therefor, such an engine can only hang in computation - being unable to produce a top move because if it were to make a suggestion then the actual best move changes to avoid it. Since the engine is unable to produce a move - there is no top engine move which makes every move legal.

A normal game of chess is played while the engine locks up on the sideline

Re: Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top engine move is forbidden

#183

Post by bertil »

There are a lot of examples here of where that would fail (openings, checks). Would it make sense to introduce rules like letting people pick any move they want for the first three turns, or allowing any checking move and counter-checking move? Or is that one of those situation where trying to fix an obvious problem lead to move issues with defining the problem clearly?

Re: Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top engine move is forbidden

#184

Post by aidenn0 »

tromp wrote: post #13

A simpler variation, that needs no computer to settle disputes, is Veto Chess. In Veto Chess you get one chance per game to veto your opponent's last move, and force them to make a different one. This shares with Human Chess the property that you can win by checking the king such that the response is forced. It may also serve as a handicap system in games between players of widely different strength, where only the w…

Is it stalemate or a loss if an opponent vetos your only legal move?

Re: Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top engine move is forbidden

#185

Post by rnestler »

electrotype wrote: post #166
klyrs wrote: post #160

Checkmate is forbidden because it's what the engine suggests. Check with a single escape is suddenly the goal. But if you're in check, do the rules say you need to try to escape it? Or can you take the opportunity to capture the queen, thumbing your nose at the false threat?

You can actually checkmate if there are two ways to do it and one is uglier.

Not really, read the fine print :)

> When multiple moves have the top score, they are all top moves, even if visual markers (like move arrows) suggest the engine prefers one over the other.

This would be the case for two check mates.

Re: Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top engine move is forbidden

#187

Post by hyperhopper »

hacym wrote: post #157
mabbo wrote: post #105

I think the 'challenge and win' concept is too strict. Just make the move disallowed. You'll need the computer to be paying attention at all times, but nonetheless it would be more enjoyable to play.

The game would never end, then. The win condition is challenging when a move is the best move. It’s similar to games of deception. You WANT the person to think you made the best move without actually making it, because if they challenge and are wrong, you win.

Why wouldn't the game end?

Re: Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top engine move is forbidden

#188

Post by hyperhopper »

3pt14159 wrote: post #164
knubie wrote: post #163

I dont follow the chess world that closely, but could someone explain why chess960 isn't more popular? Its been around for awhile and solves the problem of people memorizing opening lines, and boring chess games where the first n moves are predetermined.

It may solve opening lines, but it doesn't really solve the general concept of mass memorization. After a few moves more than 960 possible configurations of chess exist from a normal board anyway. And you can say, "oh well but the boards are roughly the same" and that's sort of true, but it doesn't really solve the problem of the people memorizing the tree. It just changes the shape of the tree. It goes from looking…

Disagree.

If you make the the 960 times as wide, people will only be able to memorize 1/960th as deep.

So not much at all.

Re: Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top engine move is forbidden

#189

Post by spindle »

Y_Y wrote: post #98
vanderZwan wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how well this generalizes to other abstract strategy games like go or checkers.

Is there a known family of "functors" for games like this, e.g. veto or having one opportunity to swap positions with your opponent etc.? It would be cool to see what you could say about the rule modification in a general sense before applying to a particular game.

There is some literature on this, yes. I don't know quite how general it gets.

See for example several books by Elwyn Berlekamp.

One outcome of this work was Berlekamp (IIRC) solving a small class of endgame problem that has eluded professional (full-time) go players for literally hundreds of years.

Re: Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top engine move is forbidden

#190

Post by abnry »

yamtaddle wrote: post #180
biesnecker wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is quite similar to how I play now anyway, so I might be really good at this version.

I'm approaching 40 years old, have played chess off and on since I was a kid, and I'm not sure I've ever played a match that didn't include several blunders. Like, on the off chance I'm playing someone who doesn't blunder often, I'll certainly pick up their slack. My game quality is measured in how many times I say "fuck!" right after moving a piece. A very good game for me is about a two-fuck game.

If chess is truly a drawn game with perfect play then whoever makes the second to last blunder is the winner.
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