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Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information

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Re: Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information

#71

Post by Ntrails »

dvt wrote: post #10

The article doesn't touch on this, but Sun Tzu famously wrote about the importance of spycraft in his The Art of War . It actually completely changed my outlook on what it's like to truly go at war (from a macro standpoint). The salient advantage often lies not by knowing what's on the battlefield, but rather what's behind enemy lines. Being able to sow dissent, for example, can be way more of a force multiplier than…

> Being able to sow dissent, for example, can be way more of a force multiplier than outnumbering the opponent on the field.

Not even just dissent, eg despair used to generate an advantage in morale can be incredibly powerful.

Alternatively misinformation can push you towards bad tactical decisions.

Re: Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information

#72

Post by kjellsbells »

dvt wrote: post #10

The article doesn't touch on this, but Sun Tzu famously wrote about the importance of spycraft in his The Art of War . It actually completely changed my outlook on what it's like to truly go at war (from a macro standpoint). The salient advantage often lies not by knowing what's on the battlefield, but rather what's behind enemy lines. Being able to sow dissent, for example, can be way more of a force multiplier than…

In the same vein: in chess, all your forces are present, and have all they need. So it's more like a skirmish than a war. In particular, wars can be won or lost not only by intellectual disruptions behind the lines, like drops in morale due to propaganda, but also because of supply line issues. Brett Devereaux's ACOUP blog has a great write up on this re the Romans and the "tyranny of the wagon equation"

Re: Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information

#73

Post by pedrocr »

ctchocula wrote: post #63
pedrocr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AlphaZero uses Monte Carlo Tree Search not MinMax. So it does use a neural network for the search. Modern Stockfish is the one that moved to having a neural network for position evaluation while keeping MinMax with AlphaBeta and heuristics for the search.

Nitpick: MCTS is a heuristic search algorithm as well (just like minimax) that doesn't necessarily need a neural network to operate and the MCTS algorithm existed way before AlphaZero, coming from Reinforcement Learning literature. Deepmind's innovation was to replace two of the 4 classic steps of MCTS (selection step and simulation step) with neural network-based policy and evaluation network.

That's a good nitpick. In recent computer chess discussions MCTS is usually shorthand for the search that was novel with AlphaZero and then copied by LeelaChessZero. But you're absolutely right, MCTS doesn't even need to imply a neural network.

Re: Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information

#74

Post by kamadan »

ftxbro wrote: post #14
kamadan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might like Reconnaissance Blind Chess [0]. It incorporates imperfect information into Chess and was developed for AI research at the Applied Physics Lab. [0] https://rbc.jhuapl.edu/

Interesting, one who makes an account to post about reconnaissance blind chess. Are you involved in it a lot? I know some who are post here.

Ha — I was thinking the same. I am not involved, unfortunately. I studied political science at Johns Hopkins during the time RBC came out though and always thought it would make a great canvas for a deeper exploration of, broadly defined, strategy; deeper than you’re conventional polsci game theory allows. But it stayed a hunch, or an intuition…

Re: Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information

#75

Post by AlbertCory »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #64
Vecr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's a very convincing argument, in game theory you are not supposed to be helping your opponent out, except in some very specific scenarios that usually involve zero and/or one probabilities or infinities, so they don't apply to real life. Using minimax in a non-infinite iterated game like chess, with the standard goal function, I don't think it ever happens. Winning is the optimal strategy every sin…

> All iterated games in the real world have a first game as well They effectively don't, because the way things work in the real world is that you become known to the competitive scene long before you reach a top level tournament and people will have definitely played against you in some capacity. If you could somehow become a top pro without interacting with the rest of the scene, then you would most definitely have…

Thanks, my joke about "will it work in theory?" is kinda on point here:

I don't think it's any slam at game theory to say that it doesn't represent the real world perfectly. It's an approximation.

Re: Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information

#76

Post by tialaramex »

faeriechangling wrote: post #46
hackernewds wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They try to mix in exploitative strategies which abuse the tendencies of their opponents. without knowledge of other players, how do pros wins consistently at casinos?

The longer you're at a table with somebody, the more information you learn about them. If they're a weak player, if they're a strong player, if they're too aggressive, if they're too passive, if they play with crappy cards, if they only play with good cards, if they have a tell. When you don't know much about the other players at a table, you tend to not use exploitative strategies as much and reply more on game theo…

Disregarding rake or table costs, the Game Theory Optimal strategy for a poker variant will always (on average over time) take money from all players who aren't also playing a GTO strategy.

It would only break even (again, disregarding rake or similar table costs) against another GTO strategy, and there's no way casual players, which is where the money enters this system, would play a GTO strategy. You're lucky if they remember all the rules of the game without prompting from the dealer.

For real poker variants, humans can't play an actual GTO strategy because it's too complicated. http://poker.srv.ualberta.ca/ provides an essentially perfect derived GTO strategy for Heads Up, Limit Texas Hold'em. It's... a lot, trying to "simplify" it will make it leak money (where Cepheus takes option A 62% of the time, B 38% of the time, simplifying to fifty-fifty will lose a little money) and trying to "improve" it (e.g. let's take on more of these potentially weak opposing hands) is likely to open gaping holes in your play that can be exploited by others.

Re: Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information

#77

Post by Vecr »

Vecr wrote: post #54
AlbertCory wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, this reminds me of one of the few Economist Jokes I know, where the economist hears of a previously-unknown real world phenomenon: "That's interesting. It works in practice, but will it work in theory?" the other one, since you wondered, is: Two economists are walking on the sidewalk and spot a $100 bill. One bends down to pick it up, but the other stops him and says, "That can't be a $100 bill. If it were,…

I'm a $100 bill picker-upper. The efficient market hypothesis is false.

Actually, to be a bit more clear, let's say you are well compensated and a $100 bill is worth 99 USD to pick up excluding outside factors. You would calculate in USD 99 - (expected loss from ambush|picked up + expected loss from arrest|picked up + expected loss from police harassment|picked up + expected loss from mob|picked up + expected loss from lawsuit|picked up + expected loss from stress|picked up + ...). I guess at that point the stress from doing the situational analysis and calculation is sunk, so you should pick up the bill if the previous calculation gives a dollar value above 0. I personally would just quickly put on gloves and check for possible ambush scenarios, and then just pick it up. If you do the full calculation at the time, someone else might get it before you. If you do most of it ahead of time, you can commit to the likely optimal decision. You need to calculate the value of your time and the value of your life in US dollars, taking into account that inflation may not work how you intuitively think it does.

Re: Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information

#78

Post by AlbertCory »

Vecr wrote: post #77
Vecr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a $100 bill picker-upper. The efficient market hypothesis is false.

Actually, to be a bit more clear, let's say you are well compensated and a $100 bill is worth 99 USD to pick up excluding outside factors. You would calculate in USD 99 - (expected loss from ambush|picked up + expected loss from arrest|picked up + expected loss from police harassment|picked up + expected loss from mob|picked up + expected loss from lawsuit|picked up + expected loss from stress|picked up + ...). I gue…

way to ruin a joke.

Re: Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information

#79

Post by faeriechangling »

tialaramex wrote: post #76
faeriechangling wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The longer you're at a table with somebody, the more information you learn about them. If they're a weak player, if they're a strong player, if they're too aggressive, if they're too passive, if they play with crappy cards, if they only play with good cards, if they have a tell. When you don't know much about the other players at a table, you tend to not use exploitative strategies as much and reply more on game theo…

Disregarding rake or table costs, the Game Theory Optimal strategy for a poker variant will always (on average over time) take money from all players who aren't also playing a GTO strategy. It would only break even (again, disregarding rake or similar table costs) against another GTO strategy, and there's no way casual players, which is where the money enters this system, would play a GTO strategy. You're lucky if th…

Yeah this is all true, I’m talking pragmatically to a huge extent here since humans don’t and can’t play perfectly and they do play at raked tables. You can’t exploit perfect play, you just end up being the one getting exploited.

Re: Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information

#80

Post by euroderf »

hosh wrote: post #6
xwdv wrote: post #3

I wonder what chess would be like if it incorporated a fog of war mechanic where you could only see some tiles around each piece, and perhaps rooks could see a straight line all the way down the board.

You mean like Strategos? I experimented with building in something like that into RPG mechanic. It's not so simple as modelling "fog of war" as uncovering terrain like in real-time strategy games, but rather, perception roll checks and modeling morale, discipline, and simulating things like tunnel-vision.

Is that the UK name of the US game "Stratego" ? Yes, a deceptively(?) simple board game that incorporates imperfect knowledge.
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