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I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

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Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#211

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

eru wrote: post #203
seanhunter wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely strong disagree with this[1], and the obvious question that arises is what would you do if a side is in stalemate and there isn't a stalemate rule? Would the other side win? Would the stalemated side pass? Neither seems at all satisfactory. The non-castling variant was invented by Vladimir Kramnik[2] explored by Deep Mind not on a whim but specifically as part of Vlad's exploration of whether this chess var…

Sorry, when I was talking about the stalemate rule, I meant the rule that declares that the game is a draw, if the only move you can make is putting yourself into check. I was not talking about the rule that handles games that do not progress. (Though I would perhaps replace that rule with one that just forbids repeating board states, but that was besides the point here.) So to make chess more elegant in how the rule…

This would make the game less elegant, in my view. There are too many endgames that are just trivially winning if you make stalemate a win for the stalemating player.

Stalemate mostly just makes the game more interesting when otherwise the position would be completely uninteresting.

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#212

Post by sicariusnoctis »

infogulch wrote: post #63

For me the most surprising observation from this thread is this tweet [1] showing that the knight's moves are exactly the squares that the queen can't get to within a 2 square manhattan distance. I.e. the knight is an anti-queen. [1]: https://twitter.com/skidbladnirr_/status/1750285122769957129

A very interesting property:

Knights have odd-even parity, i.e., they attack only opposite colored squares.

Pop quiz: How many knights can you place on a board so that they don't attack each other?

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#213

Post by sgjohnson »

ssl-3 wrote: post #196
jenadine wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't represent the "en passant" rule, nor the castling. :-)

Nor the "promotion" of a pawn that has marched across the board to begin a new life as... a pawn (or anything else that isn't a king -- this almost means a queen, but a promotion to knight can also be useful). Displaying usual the moves on the pieces is certainly super-handy for beginners to understand the moves, but as you've pointed out: Chess also has other nuances. --- I was showing off one night and, at the tail…

> this almost means a queen, but a promotion to knight can also be useful

So can a promotion to rook or a bishop, if for example promotion would cause a stalemate, especially if you're in a zugzwang.

Although such situations in actual real-world chess are _exceedingly_ rare, they make for a good puzzle material.

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#214

Post by bondarchuk »

nescioquid wrote: post #66
lemmsjid wrote: post #5

It would be interesting to do an experiment on people playing one another (online) with these pieces vs regular pieces (e.g. one player with a regular set and one player with this set). Because I do feel like I can visualize the state of the board more easily with this approach--but would that translate across people into better play, or is there some point where a more expert player (I don't play very often, though…

If you're ever going to get the point where you recognize tactics (or anything, for that matter) on the board, how the pieces move must already be internalized and not require any thought. People even especially practice visualizing knight journeys between arbitrary squares to make this more automatic. If you ask an experienced player to use a weird piece set, you will only be introducing error and cognitive overhead…

>Going at a tangent to your idea, maybe it is possible to construct a set that aids the performance of a naive player, but which degrades the performance of a more experienced opponent. Could that handicap be as great as a club player offering pawn odds against a naive opponent?

Blindfolded chess for the better player ;)

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#215

Post by bell-cot »

sicariusnoctis wrote: post #212
infogulch wrote: post #63

For me the most surprising observation from this thread is this tweet [1] showing that the knight's moves are exactly the squares that the queen can't get to within a 2 square manhattan distance. I.e. the knight is an anti-queen. [1]: https://twitter.com/skidbladnirr_/status/1750285122769957129

A very interesting property: Knights have odd-even parity, i.e., they attack only opposite colored squares. Pop quiz: How many knights can you place on a board so that they don't attack each other?

Well, since a knight on a white square can only attack knights on black squares, and half of the 64 squares are white...

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#216

Post by susam »

_a_a_a_ wrote: post #209
ssl-3 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor the "promotion" of a pawn that has marched across the board to begin a new life as... a pawn (or anything else that isn't a king -- this almost means a queen, but a promotion to knight can also be useful). Displaying usual the moves on the pieces is certainly super-handy for beginners to understand the moves, but as you've pointed out: Chess also has other nuances. --- I was showing off one night and, at the tail…

> and promoted a pawn to a pawn umm. Commendably warped, but I'm not sure that's legal? (BTW many years ago I experimented creating chess variants, before I even knew it was a thing. I invented a number which all felt contrived, but one actually felt right and an improvement, which is the ability to take your own pieces, as well as the enemy's. Turns out that somebody's already invented it (search for 'self eliminato…

>> and promoted a pawn to a pawn

> umm. Commendably warped, but I'm not sure that's legal?

Interesting point. Here is what the FIDE handbook says about it (emphasis mine):

“When a pawn reaches the rank furthest from its starting position it must be exchanged as part of the same move on the same square for a new queen, rook, bishop or knight of the same colour. The player’s choice is not restricted to pieces that have been captured previously. This exchange of a pawn for another piece is called ‘promotion’ and the effect of the new piece is immediate.”

Source: Article 3.7.e of https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/LawsOfChess.pdf

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#217

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

eru wrote: post #205
seanhunter wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean the game keeps on going? One side has to move but has no legal moves. That's what I was asking - do they get to "pass" and the other side gets to move? This is how it works in the game of go for instance. In chess that would be more or less equivalent to the non-stalemated player winning, because in many stalemate positions if you had an extra move you could checkmate. The stalemate rule adds somethi…

> What do you mean the game keeps on going? One side has to move but has no legal moves. As said elsewhere, I would suggest removing rules against putting yourself in check. > The stalemate rule adds something that the attacking player has to keep in mind and gives the defending player something to shoot for - lots of creative and tricky play arises from this, with IM Eric Rosen being the most famous exponent[1] so m…

But who cares if the rules themselves are more elegant if the game they describe is different and worse because of it?

It's like you introduced a bug in refactoring and are insisting on the change because the code looks nicer now.

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#218

Post by PeterisP »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #179
lovecg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why in some rare endgames you might want to promote to a knight instead of a queen to avoid a stalemate!

I dont get it. Queen can do everything a knight can, and then some. How can electing a knight instead of queen can be of any usefulness? Or do you mean it avoids stalemate by making it harder for the elector to defend/attack, and loose? I dont see any advantage there, isnt stalemate always preffered to loosing?

Promotion generally happens when there are very few pieces on the board, and often the opponent's king is the only piece they can move, and it often is close to the promotion square since it was likely trying to block it.

If the promoting piece can't check but immediately blocks the last movement squares for that king, as a queen may easily accidentally do, the player who has only the king gets a stalemate draw out of a technically lost position.

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#219

Post by Cook4986 »

giis wrote: post #153
angry_moose wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an updated version of this set (probably from the 90s?). Mine had a better board and I think the tops of the pieces were different, but the text/diagrams were identical: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/c1ri78/t... Not all of the moves were the clearest, but it was still handy while trying to learn.

Great! This will be excellent for beginners. I'm considering teaching chess to my kids. Can I still find it online? My searches on Amazon and Google haven't yielded the results I need.

Here’s a (free) 3D printable version I designed a few years back, for just this reason:

https://sketchfab.com/cook4986/collections/instructional-che...

The Knight was by far the hardest to design, but the 3D aspect helps visualize movement across two planes (I.e., jumps)

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#220

Post by SeanLuke »

eru wrote: post #203
seanhunter wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely strong disagree with this[1], and the obvious question that arises is what would you do if a side is in stalemate and there isn't a stalemate rule? Would the other side win? Would the stalemated side pass? Neither seems at all satisfactory. The non-castling variant was invented by Vladimir Kramnik[2] explored by Deep Mind not on a whim but specifically as part of Vlad's exploration of whether this chess var…

Sorry, when I was talking about the stalemate rule, I meant the rule that declares that the game is a draw, if the only move you can make is putting yourself into check. I was not talking about the rule that handles games that do not progress. (Though I would perhaps replace that rule with one that just forbids repeating board states, but that was besides the point here.) So to make chess more elegant in how the rule…

> Sorry, when I was talking about the stalemate rule, I meant the rule that declares that the game is a draw, if the only move you can make is putting yourself into check.

There is a Chess game that does this. It's Chinese Chess (which is just as old as Western Chess, and has the same origin in India). In Chinese Chess, the objective is to capture (or as the Chinese say, "eat") the king. There is no prohibition against putting your King in check. It works just fine, unless the only pieces left are Kings. The main problem is players doing checks forever or chasing pieces around forever: the rule is that if you do that you lose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi

Now stalemate by repeated back-and-forth is a different matter. I would favor some variant of Go's Ko rule, which is that you may not make a move if the result would be a board that looked exactly the same as it had in the past.

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