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Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

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Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#11

Post by WalterBright »

When I was in college, a Monopoly game appeared on the DEC-10. Playing that for a while completely ruined the game for me. Then someone wrote a bot to play ADVENT, which ruined that, too.

My ability to play chess declined precipitously after I learned how to program, because while thinking of my next move I'd always digress into how to design a program to do the work for me.

I originally wrote the Empire game because it was unbearably tedious to play manually, but the computer took care of the tedium and what was left was the fun.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#12

Post by thret »

throwaway4007 wrote: post #5

People have been wailing about chess being dry and full of draws and memorized openings for a century now. Capablanca wanted to swap bisbops and knights to reset opening theory, and Fischer wanted to just randomize the starting positions. I'm probably missing some other people. All of these attempts failed, because of several reasons: 1) The aforementioned problem of memorizing openings and accumulating draws only oc…

The key to chess being entertaining is time pressure. Watching Hikaru and Magnus play blitz is far more enjoyable than a 'normal' game.

I've been watching a lot of Hikaru's streams since PogChamps put him on my radar and he is a very entertaining player IMO.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#14

Post by V-2 »

throwaway4007 wrote: post #5

People have been wailing about chess being dry and full of draws and memorized openings for a century now. Capablanca wanted to swap bisbops and knights to reset opening theory, and Fischer wanted to just randomize the starting positions. I'm probably missing some other people. All of these attempts failed, because of several reasons: 1) The aforementioned problem of memorizing openings and accumulating draws only oc…

Ad 2. Very true

Ad 3. This abundance of draws (like #1) only becomes a problem at elite levels, too.

Not to mention just because a game ends with a draw doesn't mean it's a dry and boring draw. A draw can be a fascinating back-and-forth struggle full of tricks and swindles.

Same as many decisive games can actually be yawn-inducing - think 70-moves long, even endgame that comes to a conclusion only because one of the exhausted players finally blunders.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#15

Post by ajkjk »

throwaway4007 wrote: post #5

People have been wailing about chess being dry and full of draws and memorized openings for a century now. Capablanca wanted to swap bisbops and knights to reset opening theory, and Fischer wanted to just randomize the starting positions. I'm probably missing some other people. All of these attempts failed, because of several reasons: 1) The aforementioned problem of memorizing openings and accumulating draws only oc…

I really doubt (3) and (4). I think most chess players would agree that the draw-ish nature of high level play is boring and uninspiring, and that careful preparation of openings dozens of moves deep isn't the interesting part of the game.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#16

Post by loxias »

I would love to see AlphaZero play go on other manifolds than the plane.

I and some friends attempted to play 3-space go, toroidal go, and go with other mathematical roadblocks a long time ago. It was fun for a few weeks, and we even discovered some interesting properties about where life can exist on a torus, but a computer could do much better. And I'd love to just see the answers.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#17

Post by in3d »

There are promising chess variants where all draws are eliminated: no black castling or no black short-castling Armageddon (draws are counted as wins for black). I wish they would test them instead of their picks - they are still chess unlike some variants they tested, which are probably too radical if you want to attract current chess players.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#18

Post by _hao »

Kramnik is the one to talk about computer chess alright... I remember when I was still in school the huge scandal with him going multiple times to the bathroom in his match against then world champion Veselin Topalov (should be around 2005-2006). It caused huge outrage and upset in my native Bulgaria.

On a different note I learned Xiangqi (Chinese chess) this past February and I found it quite interesting and exciting. Rules seem a bit more complicated than chess and I'm not sure how it compares to Shogi for example. Pretty sure Go is still more complex though :)

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#19

Post by neolog »

loxias wrote: post #16

I would love to see AlphaZero play go on other manifolds than the plane. I and some friends attempted to play 3-space go, toroidal go, and go with other mathematical roadblocks a long time ago. It was fun for a few weeks, and we even discovered some interesting properties about where life can exist on a torus, but a computer could do much better. And I'd love to just see the answers.

How do you define "surrounded" on a torus?

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#20

Post by Quarrelsome »

I believe its very much the arbitrary numbers we gave to pieces that we coded into our brute forced chess AIs that has allowed new chess AIs to be better.

As this article hinted, its understanding of piece value fluctuates based on the rules of the game but also as the game changes. Alpha Zero makes sacrifices human players wouldn't because they're too wedded to the idea that a queen is 9, a rook is 5 and a knight/bishop is 3.5. As flexible as a human mind gets is valuing a rook pair, bishop pair or knights if the position is closed.

This means that Alpha Go destroys the greedy Stockfish because Stockfish counts the numbers but Alpha Go counts the position of the entire board which is much more complicated.

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