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Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws

chessprogramming.org

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Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws

#31

Post by toast0 »

IvanChess744 wrote: post #26

So, this website introduces Chess 744 and addresses the confusing castling issues of Chess 960. Basically, we removed the Chess 960 setups with rook and king in a corner and then used the exact mechanic from standard chess. Rool moves to king (if not already adjacent) and then king swings behind the rook. Here is the site - along with a designated setup for each calendar day. https://sites.google.com/view/chess-744/t…

> the exact mechanic from standard chess

The mechanic for standard chess is:

(If Rook and King have not moved (and no funny business with pawns promoted to Rook), and none of the three spaces the King is involved with are attacked, and all the spaces between the King and the Rook are unoccupied) King moves two spaces, Rook moves to the space the king passed over. The order is important, at least in tournament play.

Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws

#32

Post by IvanChess744v3 »

jesterswilde wrote: post #25

Chess and Go are very different in that one is for points and the other is for annihilation. However, Go solved the draw (and first player advantage) with 'komi'. Giving white (the second player) some extra points, I think it's usually around 6.5 points right now. The amount that komi should be is still up for debate and changing, though I think everyone agrees the half portion is good. Though stronger players can no…

Chess 960 was done to address memorized openings and,to a certain degree,the issue of draws.

But Chess960's castling mechanism is totally unintuitive. So, Chess 744 was born. The exact mechanic (rook moves to king and king swings behind it) from standard chess is used and all of chess 960's setups that had a rook and the king in a corner were removed. This website goes into detail. There is no better method, IMHO, of creating an intuitive chess variation that addresses this issue. It is very hard and unintuitive in Chess 960 to remember where to move your pieces to castle and whether or not it is even legal given the squares the king has to move through.

https://sites.google.com/view/chess-744/todays-744-game

Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws

#33

Post by ActivePattern »

IvanChess744v3 wrote: post #29
ActivePattern wrote: post #3

The idea of an asymmetric Chess starting position is very interesting, although it does introduce more risk of one side starting with a big advantage (perhaps this has been analyzed). I also like that in this variant, castling works like normal -- that is one of the most unintuitive aspects of Chess960.

We fixed the castling issue with Chess 744. Thoughts? https://sites.google.com/view/chess-744/todays-744-game

Yes, that appears to be another good solution to the castling trickiness! And probably how you assume castling works in Chess960 if you weren't given the rules.

Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws

#34

Post by kadoban »

jesterswilde wrote: post #25

Chess and Go are very different in that one is for points and the other is for annihilation. However, Go solved the draw (and first player advantage) with 'komi'. Giving white (the second player) some extra points, I think it's usually around 6.5 points right now. The amount that komi should be is still up for debate and changing, though I think everyone agrees the half portion is good. Though stronger players can no…

Go doesn't really have the draw problem. Scoring is sharper in go, so even with integer komi you don't see enough draws to really be a problem. Only reason you _really_ need non-integer komi is if you're running a tournament or rating system that can't accomodate them at all.

Even on 9x9, like look at GoQuest for example, they must have thousands of game a day at 7 komi and ~nobody complains if there's a jigo, it just means the game was really close.

In chess the problem is just high level play has _so_ very many draws, so it can be worth trying to reduce that.

In go you get a draw once in a while. In chess you get a draw by default and have to really work to avoid it (assuming you're at a level vastly vastly higher than I am).

Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws

#35

Post by Suppafly »

azhenley wrote: post #2

Fairly small change, just some changes to the initial piece placement. “All Kings, Rooks, Pawns are in their original locations as chess but other pieces are placed randomly in their first and last ranks, with no symmetry requirement between two sides, with the only restriction for bishops of each side must be on different colored squares.”

so the knights and bishops can swap places?

Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws

#36

Post by kadoban »

pmontra wrote: post #30
jesterswilde wrote: post #25

Chess and Go are very different in that one is for points and the other is for annihilation. However, Go solved the draw (and first player advantage) with 'komi'. Giving white (the second player) some extra points, I think it's usually around 6.5 points right now. The amount that komi should be is still up for debate and changing, though I think everyone agrees the half portion is good. Though stronger players can no…

Actually komi in go solves the problem that black won nearly all the even games between strong players, except when white was an exceptionally strong player. Hence the original 4.5 points komi about 100 years ago. The half point is the part that turns a draw into a win for white, that starts playing after black. But it's not strictly necessary: we could state in the rules that white wins draws. Black started playing…

Just for fun: it is worth noting that there were/are other solutions to the "black wins" problem, usually in the form of playing multiple games and alternating colors, and stuff like kadoban formats where if you win multiple times you start getting pushed to get progressively larger handicaps and see if you can win then.

Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws

#37

Post by jerf »

ak_111 wrote: post #5

Has anyone thought/experimented of a variant that works a bit like the starting phase of Risk: pawns are as they are classically, but players take turns in the beginning phase placing their other pieces in their respective bottom/upper file.

Yes: https://www.chessvariants.com/alphabet.html

My point not being that that is a link straight to the exact thing you've described, but that if you ask that site for all the variants it has with a blank search [1], the first 500 variants on file (give or take some administrative garbage) gets you the variants starting with a number and up to "Avalanche Chess" alphabetically... that is, you can't even get all the way through the As before the search bails out.

[1]: https://www.chessvariants.com/index/mainquery.php

Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws

#38

Post by golli »

jesterswilde wrote: post #25

Chess and Go are very different in that one is for points and the other is for annihilation. However, Go solved the draw (and first player advantage) with 'komi'. Giving white (the second player) some extra points, I think it's usually around 6.5 points right now. The amount that komi should be is still up for debate and changing, though I think everyone agrees the half portion is good. Though stronger players can no…

I think the only solution is to just abolish draws like the Armageddon chess mode does, where a draw is counted as a win for black.

And then have either an imbalance in allowed time for each player or have them bid on it.

Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws

#39

Post by orthoxerox »

ActivePattern wrote: post #3

The idea of an asymmetric Chess starting position is very interesting, although it does introduce more risk of one side starting with a big advantage (perhaps this has been analyzed). I also like that in this variant, castling works like normal -- that is one of the most unintuitive aspects of Chess960.

One option is bidding with points: player A looks at the position and bids XOr, more simply, player A is shown N random positions, picks one of them and lets player B pick the color.

Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws

#40

Post by scott_w »

toast0 wrote: post #31
IvanChess744 wrote: post #26

So, this website introduces Chess 744 and addresses the confusing castling issues of Chess 960. Basically, we removed the Chess 960 setups with rook and king in a corner and then used the exact mechanic from standard chess. Rool moves to king (if not already adjacent) and then king swings behind the rook. Here is the site - along with a designated setup for each calendar day. https://sites.google.com/view/chess-744/t…

> the exact mechanic from standard chess The mechanic for standard chess is: (If Rook and King have not moved (and no funny business with pawns promoted to Rook), and none of the three spaces the King is involved with are attacked, and all the spaces between the King and the Rook are unoccupied) King moves two spaces, Rook moves to the space the king passed over. The order is important, at least in tournament play.

Small nitpick: you could replace “no funny business with pawns promoted to Rook” with “and are on their home squares” as there’s no way for a promoted pawn to get to a rook’s home square without moving ;)
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