Check out Symmetric Chess, our featured variant for March, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Jeremy Lennert wrote on Wed, Oct 12, 2011 07:35 PM UTC:
Proving that red does not have a forced win would be equivalent to proving that white has either a forced win or a forced draw.  Even if that's true, it would be quite a lot of work to prove.  However, even if red has a forced win, the game might still be nontrivial if it is sufficiently long and complicated.  (Remember we still don't know for sure whether either player has a forced win in orthodox Chess.)

I'm pretty sure red can win within 3 moves if white opens with anything other than e3.  Most openings allow 1...Qe8, 2...Qxe+.  If 1.e4 then Qd4 threatens Qxd2+ or Qxf2+ and white can't block both.  If 1.d3 or 1.d4 (so the Bishop can jump in front of e pawn), then 1...Qh5 2.g4 Qxg4 and 3...Qxe2+ can only be stopped by 3.d3 Qh4+.

I'm not seeing any short forced win if white opens with e3, though there are several sequences red can try where white has to make exactly the right counter several moves in a row.

A computer could probably tell us by exhaustive computation whether red has a SHORT forced win, at least (say, within 10-20 moves).  Of course, that might be construed as 'ruining' the game.

Edit Form

Comment on the page Kamikaze III

Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.