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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

#261

Post by ssl-3 »

_a_a_a_ wrote: post #255
ssl-3 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any move is legal in casual play if the person on the other side of the board agrees that is is OK, especially if that game is held in their own house. I mean: We're not playing ranked games here. It's supposed to be fun, and it was a fun game. Self eliminator chess sounds like an interesting dynamic. I'll have to check it out. Some of the games where my thinking feels best (if that makes sense) are the games where a…

Point taken, rules are as agreed between players, not divinely imposed. I was just curious about P-to-P promotion legality per the 'standard' I hope SE chess lives up to its promise! It felt right and somehow freeing not to be always hemmed in by your own pieces.

I'm looking forward to absurd openings that include things like "I'm just going to use my bishop to get own pesky little pawn out of the way."

If chess is a war simulation, then: It seems like it is both brutal and useful to deliberately destroy one's own units.

(It's bad PR, always, but I'm both the PR department and the native public audience. It'll be fine on my side of the board, and it might even frighten the enemy.)

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

#262

Post by infogulch »

eru wrote: post #248
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're fundamentally changing the game, not when people resign. If stalemate is a win, almost any king and pawn vs king position is a win, which means almost every rook or bishop ending up a pawn is a win, which means it's incredibly easy to trade into a winning endgame from the middle game. Now the middle game is less interesting, because taking any kind of risk is never worth it. Which in turn makes only the mo…

When people complain about chess being uninteresting, they usually complain about too many draws. Adding more opportunities to turn draws into wins/losses might seem like a good thing? > Now the middle game is less interesting, because taking any kind of risk is never worth it. Chess is a zero sum game. Taking the right risk can also increase your chances of winning (instead of just stalemating). (I mention the zero…

Personally I find it very entertaining when a player pulls a rabbit out of their hat by turning an obviously worse position into a stalemate by some crazy trick. I think it adds some skill expression to an otherwise boring end game, and gives the losing player something to fight for at the end. Admittedly this is more interesting in a format that results in a time crunch at the end.

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

#263

Post by junon »

NickC25 wrote: post #243
junon wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has already internalized the mapping from piece shape to movement Magnus Carlson, considered one of - if not the - best chess players of all time has a famous video of him playing three chess matches simultaneously, blindfolded, and winning all three. Once you get to a certain point not only the movements but also entire gameplay strategies become internalized.

The more impressive one is where he's matched up against 10 Harvard Law students simultaneously, and is blindfolded. He won all of the games handily. Even more impressive, one of the students asked Magnus if he could sign a chess board. Not only did Magnus sign an autograph, he literally annotated the entire game from memory. That is insane to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1Rr4Uq1R-I

Holy shit, I missed this one. That's wild.

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

#264

Post by eru »

SeanLuke wrote: post #260
eru wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for bringing up the Chinese chess example! Btw, see https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.04374.pdf for an investigation. > 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. I would favour that rule as well, but keep in mind that even in Go that…

I don't know about Japanese rules, which are borderline insane. I use the only rational ones: Chinese rules! As far as I know, in Chinese rules, Ko only considers the board configuration.

Well, I have the same reaction (though a bit muted) the Western Chess's refusal to capture the king.

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

#265

Post by eru »

infogulch wrote: post #262
eru wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people complain about chess being uninteresting, they usually complain about too many draws. Adding more opportunities to turn draws into wins/losses might seem like a good thing? > Now the middle game is less interesting, because taking any kind of risk is never worth it. Chess is a zero sum game. Taking the right risk can also increase your chances of winning (instead of just stalemating). (I mention the zero…

Personally I find it very entertaining when a player pulls a rabbit out of their hat by turning an obviously worse position into a stalemate by some crazy trick. I think it adds some skill expression to an otherwise boring end game, and gives the losing player something to fight for at the end. Admittedly this is more interesting in a format that results in a time crunch at the end.

According to the paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.04374.pdf) removing the special handling of stalemates did not really change the draw ratio much. So the weaker party can still gun for the draw in most situations.

(However, they had really good computers play, who do not get stressed out, albeit they do make worse moves on shorter time controls.)

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

#267

Post by matheusmoreira »

seanhunter wrote: post #173
eru wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chess would be a more elegant game without the stalemate rule. (And apparently it would be a more _interesting_ game without castling. At least according to the game that the AIs at Deep Mind played when they trained them on this variant on a whim. Castling was supposed to speed up development of chess, but it favours the defense a lot. So what the game's appeal wins from castling in cutting out some busy work moves,…

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…

> what would you do if a side is in stalemate

Then that side loses. If they can't move, it's because any move would put them in check and therefore captured next turn. If they're in that position, they've obviously lost.

Passing makes no sense since it contradicts the rule that says chess players must always make a move during their turns. There is no contradiction with stalemates: since they must make a move and any move puts the king in check, it is hopeless and they lose.

> Neither seems at all satisfactory.

Can't be worse than drawing a game because the clearly beaten opponent can't legally move into a check.

This is an actual strategy. Refuse to resign and try to get the opponent to blunder his pieces into a stalemate in the end game thereby drawing the game. It's asinine but sometimes it actually works, especially at my noobish level.

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

#268

Post by FartyMcFarter »

lgeorget wrote: post #258
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a horrendously hard to parse definition. Couldn't they say "3 squares away but not on the same rank/file/diagonal" or something a bit easier?

"3 squares away" is not entirely obvious though. The definition as it stands is mathematically unambiguous. Obviously, it's not how you teach the rule to a beginner, but that's irrelevant.

If "nearest" is unambiguous then "3 squares away" is also unambiguous. The nearest squares are 1 square away, the ones nearest to those are 2 squares away, etc.

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

#269

Post by [deleted] »

crdrost wrote: post #52

I think this is fun, but (a) knights' threats are disconnected and this "flower" approach while good is maybe not ideal. You might as well use a hollow circle at that point. (b) when we say "chess pieces can be redesigned to be..." then I think about actual physical pieces, it would not do to make these as actual physical pieces because an accidental misplacement turns a rook into a bishop or vice versa. Gotta make t…

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