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

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

#231

Post by ratorx »

jnhnum1 wrote: post #229
yosefk wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to find out the best strategy for Human Chess is to train AlphaZero to play it, and learn from its example. Then we can make a Human Human Chess variant where you lose the game by playing the top move suggested by this newly trained engine. It is an interesting theoretical question whether we can have Aleph Zero Human Chess where Human(Human(...(Chess))) is applied infinitely, approaching Aleph Zero trai…

The answer is no: every time you apply Human(), you reduce by one the number of legal moves at every given game state. After some finite number of iterations, there are no longer any legal opening moves.

Human^n chess only bans the top move in the AlphaZero solution to Human^n-1 chess.

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

#232

Post by nimih »

ratorx wrote: post #231
jnhnum1 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is no: every time you apply Human(), you reduce by one the number of legal moves at every given game state. After some finite number of iterations, there are no longer any legal opening moves.

Human^n chess only bans the top move in the AlphaZero solution to Human^n-1 chess.

With this variant, since there are a finite number of legal board positions in chess, and Human^n chess is simply chess with a finite number of moves prohibited at each board position (claiming is the same as resigning, in this formulation), there are a finite number of distinct Human^n chess, so the mapping Human^n-1 chess -> Human^n chess must eventually reach a cycle (potentially of length 1, i.e. a fixed point).

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

#235

Post by ratorx »

nimih wrote: post #232
ratorx wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human^n chess only bans the top move in the AlphaZero solution to Human^n-1 chess.

With this variant, since there are a finite number of legal board positions in chess, and Human^n chess is simply chess with a finite number of moves prohibited at each board position (claiming is the same as resigning, in this formulation), there are a finite number of distinct Human^n chess, so the mapping Human^n-1 chess -> Human^n chess must eventually reach a cycle (potentially of length 1, i.e. a fixed point).

I’m not sure about a straight-up cycle. I think it requires determinism, whereas the engine is not necessarily deterministic (eg. NN based ones like AlphaZero).

I think it’s possible that at least 1 position (and probably a lot more) will have more than 1 optimal solution. If the engine is not fully deterministic, then it’s possible instead of a normal cycle, there are a fixed set of strategies at each n that form a cycle, but no single sequence that repeats.

The other thing that would compound this is that no current chess engine solves the game fully. There would be even more positions that have multiple “optimal” solutions if the engine only looks ahead to bounded x.

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

#236

Post by squeaky-clean »

zmgsabst wrote: post #230
squeaky-clean wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some games from the most recent chess engine tournament look whacky as hell. Like if you showed the games to a grandmaster they would probably estimate it was 2 completely new 400 elo players.

I think some of the moves the engine suggests in human games look whacky to human grandmasters. Hikaru Nakamura is a top GM that does commentary streams — and frequently comments things like “but what do I know about chess?” when responding to AI suggestions. It’ll suggest a weird move that seems to leave a mess on the board while insisting that everything is great. And obviously if you actually tried to play against…

One of the big issues with engines is that they don't assume they're playing against human players. Of course in an engine v engine tournament they're not. But it makes it hard to use them to study things, especially below elo 2000. Many times the chess.com "best move" seems utterly ridiculous, and when I click for it to follow through on the suggested move line, it shows the opponent making a response no human would ever ever make. I think we need to have some sort of division between "this engine will win any game ever" and "this engine will always win against a human."

There's been times when the chess.com calls my move a mistake, and suggests something nonsense that leads to a guaranteed mate in 15, when I got a (non-guaranteed but real) mate in 5 from my move, because I know I'm playing against a human. The engine move is more guaranteed, but very illogical unless your brain can do the equivalent of the 30 turns of minmax.

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

#237

Post by misja111 »

Dr_Birdbrain wrote: post #214
CarVac wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as putting the king in check isn't optimal…

Right, so your check should be in a context where another move was mate in 1

Not necessarily. The check with forced answer could be a terrible move in normal chess. E.g. a check with the queen where the queen can simply be taken by the king.

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

#238

Post by Planktonne »

lesiki wrote: post #15

Now: Human Chess: a variant where you can't play what AI would play. Next: AI that can play Human Chess. After: Human^2 Chess: you can't play what the AI above would play. etc I wonder if this creates distinctly new games at each level, or if it's just nonsense one level down.

It stops one level in.

AI can't win at human chess, because any move that it attempts to make is by definition the top move choice of an engine, and so causes immediate defeat.

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

#239

Post by Leherenn »

a1369209993 wrote: post #228
janalsncm wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there may not always be 3 possible moves in a given position.

There may not always be 1 possible move in a given position either; how does regular chess handle that? (Presumably you'd use the same rule by default for human^n chess.)

It's called a stalemate, and results in a draw.

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

#240

Post by DoughnutHole »

CarVac wrote: post #139
misja111 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With this variant you can win without checkmating: just checking with leaving only 1 forced move is enough to win the game.

As long as putting the king in check isn't optimal…

Which it quite often is. Like the example they show with the early-game check with the queen, putting the king in check by placing a totally undefended piece within one square of the king is (usually) a suboptimal move, and the king taking that piece will (often) be the most optimal way of getting out of check.

In this variant the attacking piece will effectively be protected by how bad its move was. Creates some interesting incentives - the only way to checkmate is a move that is normally not optimal and has only one way out of check.

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