Live data from Hacker News

Chess: Who will win in this riveting game of Math.random() vs. Math.random()?

chessboardjs.com

121–130 of 131 posts

Re: Chess: Who will win in this riveting game of Math.random() vs. Math.random()?

#122
post #109

Oooo, that makes me want to use genetic algorithms just to see if I can come up with a great chess player... Is there an online tournament where I can match my algorithm against others?

You can play bots on FICS if you disclose it.

https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/is-it-possibl...

I guess you would want to program it to only play against other bots, and many of the other ones are probably quite strong (since they're based on relatively advanced chess software). So maybe that's not the ideal environment for starting from zero.

Re: Chess: Who will win in this riveting game of Math.random() vs. Math.random()?

#123

I made something that did stats on this a few months ago see it here https://barronwasteland.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/random-move...

Those statistics are surprising.

Correct, hence part two was required. This went into some of the possible errors that came up

https://barronwasteland.wordpress.com/2014/12/13/infinite-mo...

Re: Chess: Who will win in this riveting game of Math.random() vs. Math.random()?

#129
post #92
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More interesting is checkmate with two knights which is only possible if the other king makes a mistake. You cannot force it so if two good players end up in this situation, they mostly agree on a draw.

There's absolutely nothing interesting about a position which is game-theoretically a draw and actually needs a fairly big blunder to be winnable which is why no-one even bothers in practice. More interesting is that the position is actually winnable if the losing side has an extra piece (a pawn that isn't too advanced up to board).

For those wondering about that: the pawn allows one to move through a position that otherwise would be a stalemate.

The general trick is to block the pawn with one knight, force the king into a corner with king and other knight, and then bring in the second knight for the checkmate so fast that the pawn cannot promote to a queen and then make another move (promotion to a queen is OK if the checkmate immediately follows)

Re: Chess: Who will win in this riveting game of Math.random() vs. Math.random()?

#130

I made something that did stats on this a few months ago see it here https://barronwasteland.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/random-move...

It seems like draw by insufficient mating material needs to be separated out from draw by repetition, although if you only enforce draw by repetition, it will inevitably happen on a board with insufficient mating material.

ChessPeace says "Draws by insufficient mating material is not available because of insufficient theory dealing with the non-standard pieces".

"Play with many new pieces with new abilities not seen in standard chess"

It seems that if the board is currently limited to standard pieces, it should use the standard rules for draws by insufficient mating material. How hard is that? No pawns, no non-standard pieces, no queen, no rook, less than two bishops, and no knight + bishop.

Post reply on HN