Comments by catugo
Thanks for the explanation Fergus, now it is clear to me :)!
How do I save an file to be included in a preset? I know the proper location, but I have no clue how to do it.
Hei Fergus,
About the anglican bishop, I remember noticing somthing as I had played a few games a few months back. Quite a nice game, by the way.
I almost understand the code you posted although I still have trouble with the order of operations as the instructions:
operator p q , p operator q are both valid, and that is a bit troubelling to me.
I know where to read material on this though. If I still have trouble I'll then come back to you :)!
@Fergus
I'm not confident enough to be sure about this, so I'm asking:
Is the following code fine for verifying if a piece that can perform moves only as and alfil and ThreeLeaper (or Trebuchet as is also called) but can both move and capture as a regular knight ?
checkleap #0 #1 3 0 and nor capture nor empty #0 empty #1 or checkleap #0 #1 2 2 and nor capture nor empty #0 empty #1 or checkleap #0 #1 2 1;
As a sorce of inspiration I had used your anglican bishop code in Caissa Britania :)!
Thanks!...
If the trouble is just writting initial position code I can guide you through it. You have examples on this wesite with the chess960 preset :)!
ChessV plays many Capablanca variants but technically not Capablanca Random :(!
May I ask why?
There does not seem to be a pocket knight preset :)! Is there one, but I cannot find it?
@Kevin
I live 46 kilometers (a bit less in miles I guess) from the Transilvanian border. I live in the Moldavian district of Bacau which neighbours Transylvania :)! But the interesting stuff was down to the south :)!
Or maybe, Halloween ghosts are on :)! Wooohuuuooo!
@Fergus,
Hey,
It seems I screwed up something
In the Apothecary1working settings file I have forgot to put the "//" indicating comments. So an error happened. When saving (in ignorance to the above mentioned fact) something wrong got saved and now I cannot reload without the error to come to the forefront. I guess I should have preset test before saving :(!
Please help when you can!...
Regards!...
It has been pointed to me that the promotion rules make for the possibility of not having the needed physical material for when playing on physical boards :)!
My stance on that was always that today chess is most of the time played over the internet where physical material it is not a concern as with software you can always "cast" 10 queens :)!
Official competitions are held this way mostly for tradition and cheating protection reasons.
In 50 years physical boards will probably become fringe and understood only to the very curios as is for a modern audience medieval western European poetry, for example :)!
I never liked Christian Freeing's Grand Chess promotion rules. It just makes a good game worse. Fergus Duniho has done better in Gross Chess (the game in the I have in the meantime remember I got the idea of such complex rules) gives the extra possibility, with respect to Cristian Freeling's game, of promotion to more queens, rooks, bishops and knights probably under the pretext that such material is more easily obtainable casually and more cheaply in the market. That is a big help. I will make such rules myself but not because it makes the game better (it does not make it worse and after you read the rules you would see why this practically cannot happen) and I'm not worried about the material as my way still requires plenty of physical pieces, which will make individual boards cheaper, nor will help or hinder eventual clubs who should anyway need to have extra boards with extra pieces. But as a respect for the reach history of the art of chess boards and pieces I will insert the following restrictions:
A player can have at a time a maximum of:
4 rooks
3 queens, knights, champions, siege elephants,mamelukes, wizards and bishops
2 griffins,marshals,archbishops and aancas
and as stated in a previous comment 1 joker
I had also decided to scrape the extra initial moves of the pieces starting on the bruhaha squares.
In his initial game of Bruhaha Greg Strong has done this in order to have extra opening possibilities.
But in these games it is not that needed. Only the champions has to suffer as he cannot jump to the 3rd rank during his first move. So maybe he will be moved twice in the opening :)!
Hello again folks,
While reading Fergus's "How to enforce rules in game courier" I rethought the idea of castling (which did not exist until now) in the 2 apothecary games. Even if the game starts with connected rook,s tucking the king to more safety while plunging the rooks into action seems a good extra choice. And I figured as the board is wider I could allow more options, and giving the fact that moving the king closer to the edge is usually more desirable I decided for two sub options in the closer to the middle castles. A specific choice of castling will be available only if the king path to it's destination will be unobstructed, the rook's path to it's destination is unobstructed by anything else than the king and both the rook to be moved and the king have not been yet moved; also the king needs not to cross a checked square in it's path :)!
The king's path is given by a diagonal step back towards the rook and the horizontal steps until destination.
The six castling options are:
1. King side long castle: The king moves (for white) through g1&h1 and lands on i1. The king side rook then jumps on h1.
2. Opposite side long castle: The king moves (for white) through e1&d1 and lands on c1. The king side rook then jumps on d1.
3. King side short castle: The king moves (for white) through g1 and lands on h1. The king side rook then jumps on g1.
4. Opposite side short castle: The king moves (for white) through e1 and lands on d1. The king side rook then jumps on e1.
5. King side short spread castle: The king moves (for white) through g1 and lands on h1. The king side rook then jumps on f1.
6. Opposite side short spread castle: The king moves (for white) through e1 and lands on d1. The king side rook then jumps on f1.
I seem to not be able to find the kibbitzing part on my own games, why?
I had checked older games and I can see them. Maybe a specific one is broken. I see at least a working dozen :)!
To my understanding archers are meaningless inside the trojan horse besides the fact that they can be dropped :)!
Yes, this place indeed needs a diagram as the rules are quite difficult to follow :(!
Hi Fergus,
I don't seem to understand squat out of the griffin code :(!
First I don't understand what "sign -" does. I'm thinking that it means that both the rank and file must vary by 1 in absolute value. But I don't see the intricacies :)!
The aanca code seems roughly the same albeit for an abs function :(!
I get the same feeling :)!
So when the time please fill me in to some details, please!
Don't worry, Anthony!...
The offers are open for five more days. We can always redo them.
If you are unaware of this material, it would probably help to check it : https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/help.html
I'll be happy to talk you through in in the game chat when needed:)!
I hope everything is fine!... Good luck :)!...
Actually there was an extra error. The first line did not end in semicolon. Now it does :)!
Tricky thing, is that after I have written the semicolon in the proper place, my tests yielded a zero for the first six times. "Lucky" I was confident enough and the 7,8 and 10th test were ones. And that's fine. I just wanted to point out the statistical peculiarity :)!
@Fergus
Ok, Got it!...
Sorry for the trouble :)!
@Fergus
Ok, Got it!...
Sorry for the trouble :)!
I did save it the way you suggested. The way it was was obviously wrong. The problem is still in the set instruction as far as I can see :(!
Yes, this was one of my later atempts, it does not work without the paratheses :)!
Ok, here are the 2 apothecaries:
https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Apothecary+Chess+1&settings=Apothecary1working
https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Apothecary+Chess+2&settings=Apothecary2working
They are mostly the same, so there is one or the other.
Please ignore the move forcing attemps. For now just the initial position matters. A long time ago I wanted to move forward. I still do. But the initial position still has errors and that should be taken care of first.
Unfortunately I seem to still get the behavior I got two years ago, meaning the second part (the else part) of the code always executes in the two if statements conditioned by the coin1 and coin2 variables. I had tried to use rand 1 2 instead of rand 0 1 and set (rand 0 1) meaning adding parentheses. None of these work. They were desperate attempts anyway .
Hello everybody!
Once again I need some help with the game courier programming.
I am attempting once again to write rule enforcing presets for my 2 apothecary games.
In my first presets, which I use as basis for development, I had written a short code meant to choose out of the 24 legal initial positions.
Next there is an explanation about what the code is supposed to do.
As I have written in my article apothecary 1&2 have 24 initial possible position which can be chosen by 2 throws of coins and a throw of dice. The first coin throw would decide the placement of the major pieces. If it is centralized (on the d,e&g files) this should be 1 otherwise (on the b,e&i files) it should be 0. The dice throw then decides which of the 6 permutations of pieces occupy the 3 designated fields on the files decided by the first coin (they occupy the 2nd rank for white and the 9th rank for black). The second coin should decide if the bishops occupy the remaining files closer to the king (bishops in) when the coin is 1 or closer to the edge (bishops out). Take note that the fields on the a and j files (ahead of the rooks) are empty.
In order to achieve that I had used the following code for apothecary 1 (for 2 there is just a piece naming difference so far):
empty b2 c2 d2 e2 g2 h2 i2 b9 c9 d9 e9 g9 h9 i9
set coin1 rand 0 1;
set coin2 rand 0 1;
if == coin2 0:
drop Q any b2 e2 i2;
drop A any b2 e2 i2;
drop G any b2 e2 i2;
copy b2 b9;
copy e2 e9;
copy i2 i9;
flip b9 e9 i9;
else:
drop Q any d2 e2 g2;
drop A any d2 e2 g2;
drop G any d2 e2 g2;
copy d2 d9;
copy e2 e9;
copy g2 g9;
flip d9 e9 g9;
endif;
if == coin1 0:
drop N last b2 c2 d2;
drop N first g2 h2 i2;
drop n last b9 c9 d9;
drop n first g9 h9 i9;
drop B last b2 c2 d2;
drop B first g2 h2 i2;
drop b last b9 c9 d9;
drop b first g9 h9 i9;
else:
drop B last b2 c2 d2;
drop B first g2 h2 i2;
drop b last b9 c9 d9;
drop b first g9 h9 i9;
drop N last b2 c2 d2;
drop N first g2 h2 i2;
drop n last b9 c9 d9;
drop n first g9 h9 i9;
endif;
My questions are:
1. How do I know that the preset sets a new random seed, if it does, as I do not seem to find any mention on that in the developer guide besides the constants chapter (by the way the link to fisher random chess from the developer's guide seems to be wrong although I could find the game through game courier->games to play-> the letter F->...)?
2. How would I test that the distribution among the 24 position is constant? The play button (playing with myself) yields the same results always?
Thanks!
@HG&@Greg
We have discussed the matter of possible rock-paper-scizors effects with negative conclusions so maybe my idea involving musketeer chess gating was an overreaction, but maybe may be kept in the back of the mind if such problems arise. Good luck everybody :)!
@Greg,
First, I'm on the tip of my toes about your next trial with conditions adapted to HG's observation.
"Again, I don't think changing BD to BnD changes the flavor or removes any spice. Do you? "
I have a bit of discomfort as the game did not had any lame leapers before but that borders on nothing. I'm more concerned how the change affect the balance against the two other armies. As this seems to me that will lead to a wave of interconnected changes that are probably not easy to pull through. Some sort of logical system of equations needs maintaining and I honestly doubt such and endevour is even doable, little to say about feasible. This because you don't have many options for tunning while keeping the initial flavour on
But I'm very much for any CWDA game. It is just that a sequel to Betza's game should borrow off his elements otherwise it is another chess with different armies game. A better one quite likelly.
"On this we must disagree[about the game not needing rescuing]. Sure, it is playable. It is one of the most popular games on Game Courier so certainly people can play it and have fun. But if the armies are way out of balance, as it has become clear that they are, then it fails at its stated goal. If the game were played and studied even more as time goes on, people would learn exactly how to exploit the unbalance and the game would no longer be playable. "
The game is good enough at my level. It is probably good enough at any current human level (although this could be a stretch) but there is always the quest for even better (I am an engineer after all). And the endeavor of making another game sequel or not is great. I'd venture the idea we may need to make a distinction about it, but if we don't make it other future people will surely do, if it's the case, so much bothering could not be needed here either.
What I was actually insisting about it was that maybe my musketeer technique is and easier goal to achieve without sacrificing any design principles(besides making the board more crowded which is something I actually like, even if 36 pieces on an 8x8 tends to be too much even for me). But we can easily go on our merry way if this back and forth can't advance in an useful way and maybe History will decide. Or not, as currently chess variants don't seem to catch on! The space of possible chess variants is so vast that there is more than enough room for all of us. I remember you actually agreeing to help, so that is cool. So it is a math debate actually: the way I like it :)!
@HG,
In CWDA army tunning is most definetly a thing for any AI, epeacially in the context of flavor I was discussing with Greg earlier. In machine learning that should come rather easy but unfortuneatly I have not god that far. In the end the army is just another variable (be it some multidimensional properties). What I mean is that it should not be more difficult than any other desing of such algorithms.
@Greg,
We can very much leave Betza's game as is and invent a improved version ourselves. There is nothing wrong with that. And balance is the primary goal but to me the flavor is what bring the spice :)!
" If you want to make such a game, I would encourage it and I would try to help if you wanted, but I don't see this as a valid approach to rescuing CwDA. "
I don't say CWDA needs rescuing it is a good game. But I also see it as a good lesson, we could use. The musketeer chess approach is meant to offer a way to balance the imbalances in a specific way to each match, because yes it is about armies and not the individual pieces but there is that old libertarian saying that society is made out of individuals which I think goes well here. A pair of minors or a rooklike and a bishoplike piece would at least open more doors which is hardly done otherwise, as far as I can see!
I thought a bit about Greg's proposal of weakening the charging rook (and his earlier proposal of weakening the Bede). I personally see big flaws with such a approach as the state space of the problem has at least 4 dimensions (16 if you consider playing white or black different things). There could be a solution but first remember the the state space of the possible solutions is linked to the choosing of the pieces out of a small possible set, is it is probably non-neglijable likely to plainly not be able to succeed as the demands ar pretty tight. My proposal for getting out of the impasse is to combine the CWDA with musketeer chess. But instead of offering many options we may give a set of gating pieces for each of the 16 encounters (let's include FFvsFF here as they could receive slightly different pieces in order to compensate for playing white.). They can be just one piece of a general value of approximately 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or maybe pairs of the same or different pieces. Pairs of approximately 2.5 pieces seems quite interesting to me, as 2 of them worth exactly a rook and for one of them you may capture a regular minor and give up some positional or capture 2 pawns and earn some minor positional bonus.
For example in the FFvsFF encounter which in regular Betza is banned I think white should be able to gate two ffbbNsD and black should be able to gate two ffNsDbbLbH. Maybe the second piece is actaully worse but at first glance more jumping retreats should be better, be them longer. They also add to versatility especially in the endgame. Such pieces should worth around 6.5/8 knights=0.8125 knights=0.8125*3.25 pawns=2.640625 pawns=2.65 pawns, so pretty good.
Another reason Betza's implied (and indeed not stated) principle of armies with different styles should be preserved. The gating piece would probably be counter style, though in order to compensate for the misshapen of that particular matchup.
Greg,to be honest,i'm not sure if we should plunge ourselves into piece change judgemets. It is, most likelly, more complex than just this experiment. Also the game needs to be fun. My take from cwda is not about balance but aboutsomething i'd call "dinamic balance" as each army seems to "mean" something. I'm preparing a small experiment on this, also!... And maybe a more interesting rook could be along the lines of fsR4bWbB2
Would You like a catapulta double header? And the also a centenial double header? I'll make the challenge!... I Hope we will have fun!
Actually to me there are a lot of bonus points if the ideas work well together. That is actually the main goal :)! So I'm totally on board with your first three paragraphs :)! My main goal in asking you this question Anthony was to understand something I don't but it seems you do!
After reading your whole argument Anthony I see your points. Thanks! That it was what it was all about :)! You have explained quite well. Thanks!... As my games are called apothecary maybe someday I'll put in some apothecary variants!...
For how many pieces is it feasible? Like for CWDA is K+Woody rook+short rook vs K +waffle (WA) doable?
I meant from a game theoretical point of view :)!
To be honest I do not see the appeal of this game although people seem to applaud it latelly. It is not that the basic passable obstacle with an effort idea is bad , but there is not enough material to make a strategic game as far as I can see. May someone make in effort to describe his/her's appeal to this game?
I have found it thanks :)! For both of you, Carlos and Fergus!
Not long ago (around late august 2018) Fergus has changed the menu system.
It seems a good change, but, for me, I cannot find the GC rating system anymore. Can anyone please help?!...
Thanks!
I wanted to notice something in HG's old results.
I see the CC and the NN are balanced against each other but the CC behaves quite worse versus the RR (10%). So it seems same small but not insignificant rock-paper-scisors effect is taking place. This could be due to a possible need (I mentioned a long time ago in the different context) of a concept of multidimensional piece values. But it is probably more than that if any such thing is possible? The NN are a "pressure" army as they have more forward moves and the RR are usually slower as they can't turn a corner that easily. This seems a reduction of the weakness of the NN. On the other hand CC has the strategic weakness that it can be twice impaired by te lack of an counterpart of the other color bound piece.. RR can profit more easily from that as because of it slowness weakness it is a more strategic army herself. The NN don't have time for such debates. They need to "act" so they can't profit out of it.
Such lines of reasoning are most likely usefull but I can't pinpoint why I'm a bit uncomfortable with the idea of studying it exactly here. Maybe the game dimensions.
I think the NN despite their many weaknesses they have a wonderfull middle game. That should probably always do it!
@Greg The Bede thingie seems a good idea for me and it does sound more natural for a rook!
About the RR, I find the FDH quite akward and it sould be around rook level. It probably is not (but the R4 definetly compensates for it).
Anyway very nice effort on mister Betza part in an era when computers were much weaker :)!
By NN I meant Nutty Nights. Sorry for the confusion. And I was not thinking about this. By definition the charging knight is a major piece. So is the charging rook, that should be obvious, and along with the colonel this means 3 major pieces. Although the colonel is probably weaker than the ordinary king or than the marshal!
The way I see it and I remember you commenting about this on wikipedia, HG (and us having this discussion a while ago) the order of the armies is NN>CC>FF>RR. But they are close. I like this game for the diversity though. In a private talk Vitya Markov has said that he think the RR are the stronger. I had never made this experiments, though.
Nice data HG!
My trouble is that I was already considering the NN overpowered :(!
I have seen a game of CWDA where K& Charging Knight has managed to checkmate a lone king. I was first not expecting this but it now seems normal especially if the attacking pieces are "above" the defending king. I'm not sure if it works otherwise. Anyone else knows anything else on that?
If your promote to a, after 1...ab8-d7 you can easily have 2.a c8-b7 with check and afterwards capture the enemy archbishop with your other one and then your are out of the woods :)!
@Fergus,
In the era of computer chess promoting to captured pieces does not seem that relevant anymore. Your Gross chess idea on promotion is great. I had saw it once, but forgot the game and author and somehat use it in apothecary (the promoting to different things part not the captured pieces part). In the meantime I had read it again.
And being at the topic of promotion, I'd like to bring a discussion from this topic on. In CWDA I'm quite uncounfortable with pawns promoting to pieces from both starting armies (where the case). That is because well then the armies are less "different". The reason given by Betza is very sound. The pawns are then different and that difference should be accounted for. True. But for future CWDA if they are on larger boards (normally with more pieces) there is more room to optimize so different promotions for pawns would not be an issue !
I am encouraging promotion to weaker pieces on earlier ranks (technically not underpromotion I guess) but I am not sure why this principle does not catch steam :)! To me it seems extra choice and that is always good provided there are not clear inconviniences. And I see none :)!
About promotion from my experience with the two apothecary games which I have designed and I had the promotion rules similar (although at the time I have forgotten the exact game from where I had took the inspiration) most often the rook is the piece of choice because on rare ocasions the extra move actually worth it. HG pointed that first to me and I tend to agree. But it is much more fuzzy probably than him and me actually though about it initially. Probably here is the same thing. But for promotion extra on the side material 1 queen, 1 rook and 1 knigh would be more than enough.
@Fergus
I agree with you and I think the lesson to bear in mind is that we should aim for such things in future games. For example my probably only criticism to gross chess is the unchanged knight. You said once that that makes it more a defense piece because otherwise you lose turns in order to get the knight to go offensive. But nothing is exchangeable for knight, as the vao is likely weaker (this could not be true in the opening though). I tend to think natural knights for 12x12 could be LT (camel-treaper which is colourbound but has a nice distribution of destinations), ZH (zebra-threeleaper), CH (camel-treeleaper) and ZT (zebratreaper). The need 4 moves to exit the board starting in the oposite edge which makes them relatively "as" fast, but they are a bit more awkward to use. They are probably a bit stronger than 12x12 bishops as per increased forking power. Also they work differently with pawn chains. So maybe to get the chess feel you should allow pawns to always be able to go 2 squares to either move or capture with keeping en passant always :)!
@HG,
By the way, technically the Chu shogi lyon has a knight move, even a enhanced one actually. But anyway the hippogonal pieces are are very basic thing to need to compensate for :)!
@Fergus
&the rest
I agree that the knight move is complemtenting both the diagonal and orthogonal move. But I like to point out something once Betza has said that it is very helpfull coincidence that the very different knight and bishop are so close in value on an 8x8 board. That is in a way arbitrary (in the way in the usual math pi is 3,.14... maybe someone with better philosophy background could explaid that sort of arbitrariness better) but the emerging properties of that are quite nice as now more diverse endgames are possible.
HG,
I'm not exactly sure what can't be the point of the discussion. Is that the fact the several nextchesses could happen. That was the point I'm making to couter-balance the idea of a dominat "next variant" which used to be at least pretty popular on this website. Indeed to me it is obvious that there is not just one "good" solution but several. But it is probably not obvious for everybody :)!
Anyway even if pieces like knights (and most other stuff maybe) are not necessities, anyone ca easily argue that combining styles could bring new interesting concepts, higher truths if I may. Sure new way of getting into trouble when designing are to be taken care of, but in opposition to most people I think more is better for the forgeable future (I don't mean 32x32 games, I mean feasible more).
I think chess popularity had an accidental side to it. It so happened that a good game had not an equal competitor and a snowball effect took place. But the interesting part if why is a good game. This discussion is overly done so no point into getting here again. But waht about the future? This was my point. I guess I did not get it across nicely :)!
I totally agree with Fergus there, I actually had this concept in mind but unfortunately did not bother with finding the quote so thanks. But that does not preclude the possibility (I obviously cannot speak for Fergus but I'm as sure as I can be that he would agree with me) that this could very well be a problem with several solutions. i mean there are sheep, cows and goats. They are all fine herbivores. And most likely it is by the laws of big numbers .
Also even more, Fergus mentioned (I don't recall the literal way) while recommending Gross Chess that there is room for niche variants, meaning people who like crazier (but definitely not inconsistent things) variant using joker or weird board topologies or who knows what?
About the forum link, I had not read each line but I get the point and you are correct. It is well done. Actaully Betza's articles (some touching exactly on this) were my entry point on this website :)!
Hello again,
it seems quite odd to me that not many care about this topic, as it used to be a leading one on this website and I think with good reason.
In strengthening of my previous post here is an essay (although is titled research article the content does not seem to make it such a thing) of Daniel's Denett. It purpose os to raise a concern about meaningless philosophical endeavor. I think this heavily applies to chess variant design and as it goes a chess variant is the example in the article.
This is to say that we should aim for those variants that bring new meaning, not just crazy for the sake of crazy but consistently "good" as out of their "first principles" interesting higher truths emerge.
Hi Kevin,
I am not that sure that your perceived failure of an nextchess idea is totally justified.
Your argument about the grandfather-grandson game is definitely correct. More over as you have said before (in different words I cannot recall exactly), it is difficult to make a game as perfectly done as the "Mad Queen" variant ended up being :)! This is why I had argued for (may I shall now name it) the many nextchess hypothesis. Together they may prove to become even more popular then it's predecessors, but separately indeed one game will never be as dominant. That makes sense mostly because of the different paths next chess can take. Let's think about 10x10 games which seem the most convenient. I'd vote for Grand Chess, Omega Chess, Eurasian Chess and Shako although I have some quarrels with the first 2 (and technically omega chess in not exactly an 10x10 game). Each has it's beauty although I won't go into details here. Further even, Gross Chess offers a melding of them. A very well made game. Another path is Chess with different armies. Betza's one is definitely the most popular one but certainly Spartan chess deserves it fair share of respect. For multi move or at least interesting 8x8 ideas (again technically not 8x8), I really want to mention 8 stones chess. Musketeer chess has it's merits also, although I'm not that happy with the execution. Maybe just an 9x8 board would be an improvement as to me the game seems way to crowded. The pieces are quite creatively done. Although no griffin?!.. Come on :(! There are also drop games in the shogi family. Pocked shogi copper seems quite promising, and here maybe is fair to mention chu shogi with it's special Lyon piece (and oh boy,oh boy that tenjiku stuff). Xianqi offer special things with it's confined king and weaker armies and the more rarely used hopper pieces. I think this fills everybody's hands with next chess opportunities. And in closing I'd like to add my (I'd like to say humble but I'm actually quite proud of them) apothecary games. I have designed them (in the conditions where Grand, Gross, etc. already exist) to add some cream to the cake by adding weird pieces like the joker, special promotion moves, stronger knights, bruhaha squares with different opening powers, and even alternative endgame conditions. I'd like here to express my concern than nobody noticed my proposed modification to the 2 apothecaries :(! (check the last 3 comments- the last one is actually me turning a bit too hippie ) : https://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?itemid=171817414be164e8&order=DESC .
And now let's get to serious business. But first le me explain something in order to go further. Bear with me please.
First I will refrain from using words like chaotic, random and deterministic as they do hold specific meaning for the more mathematically aware, the pop culture tends to toy with their normal usage. They way I see things at least, knowledge acquiring has two extremes. The first is the tumultuous trial and error with learning from big data, creativity and maybe even a touch of madness found most in peak science (the last one and a half decade even more) or in the natural evolution of life. The second is the steady, safe, consistent, orderly and reductionist way of the engineers. Meaning principles are fine, but how do we automate things to get things going. And I insist on automate. Chess is very much towards the second type. I'm sure many would disagree but remember what type of game chess actually is mathematically speaking.
So why this sudden philosophy burst?
Mostly because I do not think we should look for nextchess in the past tradition but in the holdings of the future. As I have insisted earlier on the word automate. I want to argue for the fact that chess was always meant for computers, just that at the time of it's and it's predecessor birth there were no such things (in a practical 20th century way at least). Still of course there were people who found pleasure in such findings starting roughly in early middle ages (although the Western historical timeline does not have fully explanatory power I'll stick to this approximation). But then chess and it's relatives became increasingly mechanistic in a accelerated manner in the 20th century. So, the point here is that chess is a celebration of thoroughness and that is the context where we should start our search. But, what is chess in a general way? Hard to say exactly but I'll venture a description with a flavor of definition. Chess has the attributes of being a game of usually perfect information, usually without random elements (and for know I will insist on these usual cases), where pieces with different attributes interact on the discrete and finite board (again usually but the exceptions to these are rare). A more narrower definition could impose the regular winning condition, among other things. This description leaves enough room for what if scenarios so that we will put our lab coats, make "fun" variants, and design AI's that play them well.That to see what happens and in the process bring a new level over the type 1 way of acquiring knowledge. These are the nextchess(s). And dear colleagues the show must go on!
A small addition regarding the AI vs human challenges of the last few decades comes next. Looking in hindsight, it seems that the initial ones were designed to see how good chess engines of the time were. There were no better challenges for AIs than the best humans. Now AIs have each other for that (check TCEC). In time human vs AI became just a exercise of blunder checking for the human candidate as seen in the recent MVL-Komodo challenge I've mentioned a few days ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exgVvSauvhQ). So today is just engines. In time, when people will become androids, or who knows what, we will probably have individuals (for lack of a better term I'll use the popular transhumans) that will choose such a "career". But for know we should accept that and invent chess variants accordingly.
Lastly I'd tackle the popularity issue. People worry a bit about machine on machine challenge not being popular, but TCEC does decently and that is not even a game designed with the new ways in mind. And the next human generation will obviously have a totally different outlook on life (some of your are probably parents and know better). So, never say never.
Thanks for reading so far, I appreciate it.
And I closing please if you'd like to continue the discussion please touch on the following issues:
1. Is the many nextchess hypothesis reasonable?
2. Should we try to promote successful (be it at our small scale) variants?
3. Is the chess is for Automation/analyses hypotheses for what chess means and is best for pinpointing viable?
4. Should we invest time in AI contests?
5. (I have not actually tackled that yet) How should we encourage spectators for chess variants in TCEC like events (understanding that the first step is that spectators should have a good knowledge not just on the rules but also on the strategy and tactics of the game).
- please find the time to take a look on my latest apothecary changes :)!
@Fergus
I don't seem to find the rating page. I guess I can google it, but maybe it should be a bit accesible :)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exgVvSauvhQ
I noticed this video on YouTube (which some probably already know).
It contained well known GM Maxime Vachier Lagrave playing Chess.com's AI level 16-20 mostly in preparation for 6 odds games with increasing advantage for MVL against Komodo. A nice one was the final one where MVL got black and played without his knights where Komodo got the white pieces and 7 knights on the back rank on the regular non-king squares instead of the regular pieces.
I remember HG Muller saying something a while ago about minor pieces unorthodoxly defending each other in such cases. This is a good example of that. Many times you just cannot dislodge knight chains as many times a knight is protected by two other.
I was also thinking about an more extreme version of that where black has the usual setup, and white has besides the back rank knights 3 more knights replacing the pawns on a2,b2 and h2. This is probably better for black than the previous setup as now black flanking pawns could prove troublesome despite the material balance being the same (-4 point with the classic piece evaluations).
Any thoughts?
All right, thanks, but the initial question is pretty good :)!
HG,
How have you build and implemented the AI in peace chess?
Chess V plays some of them including one of mine but you should realize (I think you had punily intended to hint you are yourself a programmer) that is not an easy task to take as such a general AI is rather hard to build. But maybe we should try.
You may download ChessV here : http://www.chessv.org/
Good luck !
While reading up again on this game as to reading some info on Facebook, I came up with a possible improvement.
I'm thinking about player gaining points for capturing enemy pieces say 1/5 or 1/4 out of the usual value (0.2,0.6,1,1.8 or 1.25,0.75,1.25,2.25) and being able the use whole point to buy pieces with the cost being the usual value. This would be to discourage trying to control neutral armies to fast. Initial placement will probably need to change but I'm thinking within the context. Bought pieces would be of the player's color and buying occurs as a move concurrently with dropping the bought pieces adjacent to the players king (if the full move is not possible then the buying cannot take place). Is this idea good?
When you get into 5-6 pieces pawnless endings it probably get really tricky :)!
The rules don't seem clear to me.
From what I understand when you drop a piece you cannot now which one is. Always? Besides when there is only one type of piece in hand :)!
But how can you find out? When you opponent moves? If so there will be a pretty difficult elimination proces :(!
@Kevin
In my infinite modesty I can bragg I had a contribution to adding the copper (as it would be hard to defend otherwise) :)!
Care to try one, two?
A Facebook person trying to inquire about posting a new game which is incompletely described in this website : http://castlestrife.com/03_csc_006_csc_home.html<p>. A third party has informed me that the author of the game was unable to send a email to a gmail acoount. I remember that gmail does not work here anymore, I have forgot the details. Is there anyway to move the process forward. I guess I can myself first suggest a non Gmail account!
</p>
Moreover, I want to try to implement these games which now seem better to me into ChessV2 (where 10x10 games look nicer and games are generality easier to implement).
There I want mostly to attempt to evaluate the piece values, using the HG Muller method.
This will be especially tricky with the joker does not have a fixed value as I discussed a while ago here mostly with Greg but depends heavily on the opponents material :)!
Then I'll try to automate the presets and change the 2 articles accordingly :)!
I hope this time laziness won't get the best of me :)!
Almost a year ago it seems I had promised the automatization of my two apothecary games presets. So far laziness got the worst of me it seems :)! But before that after good feedback from the community, my own thoughts on the matter and according to the initial plan I had decided to change the rules to both the games a bit.
I'll start with apothecary 2 as it has more changes:
1. With the exception of the knight there will be no more divergent pieces as many have told me they are are confusing (the ones here I mean).
2. The zebra seems to have too long jumps so I had decided to change the zebra to a second camel.
3. Now , according to 1, the camel is a full WL (in Betza notation). Because the name "camel" has a classic meaning I thereby rename this piece "the mameluke". As mamluks were many times camel riders and some of them were rising to the governmental ranks (wazir).
4.Also according to 1, the elephant now becomes a full HAF. I rename this piece a "siege elephant" inspired by the Khmer unique unit in the Ages of Empires 2 rise of rajas expansion, and it features the elephant origin along with the siege (0,3) flavor. I'm not sure if thorough history elephants were actually used in sieges. It would not make much sens to me as the eat a lot and are unpredictable :)!
5. The knight in this game is the omega chess advanced knight and thus has besides regular knight powers zebra just move powers. In Betza NmZ (although according to Wikipedia zebra is J so it could be NmJ).
In apothecary 1:
1. I did not want to have the same knight in both games so here the knight has (3,0) and (2,2) jump just move powers instead of the zebra ones. In Betza: NmHmA. There is no H in this game and the alfil jump is a nice addition as that square is difficult to reach by regular knight jumps. And the diagonal jump seems better to me than a dababah addition as there is already an orthogonal jump :)!
In both games
1. The joker insert rule does not seem to make much difference so I've decided to reduce the max dropping turn for white to 8 and for black to 14.
2. A player may promote a pawn to joker at the 9th or 10th rank if he does not already own one. Meaning a maximum of 1 joker/side on the board :)!
Here is a crazy idea. Will this work with in a crossover with batille chess where Achilles (I would not call him Robespierre though :) ) starts outside the palace and it is never aloud to enter :)!
Oh, I have not noticed this aspect. Thanks!... That makes it more interesting :)!
Checkmating in this game is very difficult :)!
while answerring a privare message to jeremy. I remember forgetting to click the "personal" radio button while pasting the user id as needed. It seems we are in agreement here Fergus. I'm glad that the loophole is closed now. Good luck :)!
I have made 5 personal maorider chess challenges to Jeremy Good.
In the logs in the "log" coloumn I'm shoown the intended catugo-judgmentality-2018-186-508 label (a bit different on the other 4). But in the later 3 games like this: catugo-judgmentality-2018-186-515 I am show in the "next move for" coloumn that "anyone" can move not Jeremy good as in the others. Or is it that I've made something wrong? Normally when I issue an open challenge challenge the game is baptised catugo-gameroom. So something must be wrong though, even if by me!
Maybe some would like this youtube channel :)!
I'm not sure about the knight's and camel's promoted forms. Can they be blocked after the first knight/camel leap or something akin to mao with a twist for the camel :)!
I actually agree with Greg on every aspect. That is weird, is this the downfall of the internet? :)
In the game courier move aftermath, I receive this notice : Notice: [email protected] was not used as the Reply-To address, because this user does not allow that.
What exactly don't I allow, and how do I solve it ?
At first glance, this post seemed aa bit exagerated, but yes Fergus you did a good work, for what my non even amateur poinion worths. :) ! You deserve a 6 pack :)!
It will still require the number of participants to be non-prime :)!
You probably could make the pairing work and allow players who have played before to play with reverse colors. It probably can be done but it requires some combinatorics, I have not done the work :)!
A thought has crossed my mind just now.
Understanding of this comment requires understanding of the concept of Basque chess : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_chess (just ctrl+F Basque chess)
I was thinking about making the pairs in regular Basque chess change to triplets or more. Here is what I'm thinking in terms of triplets :
P1 plays white against P2
P2 plays white againt P3
P3 plays white agains P1
for n-tuplets the thing goes like this
P1 plays white against P2
P2 plays white against P3
P3 plays white against P4
...
Pn-1 plays white against Pn
Pn plays white against P1
This may be useful in Swiss tournaments where there are a non-prime odd number of players :)!
Any thoughts?
I don't seem to find the spartan chess preset. Any ideas?
I had played a few games of this game and I honestly cannot find an approach to finding piece values for this game. I mean at least a theoretical one.
HG's experimental method which implies pitting up different pieces in different armies in an otherwise equal and known environment, should theoretically work, but it seems at first glance quite unfeasible. First and foremost that is because pieces loose or gain a lot during a game as pieces with low mobility have more winning points ("points" as they are described in the rules). To me for this specific reason, this game is a marvel.Also in the late mid game to the endgame, a king especially but even a knight worth much more on more advanced rank. This is akin to regular chess king safety, but look more like Arimaa rabbit threats, as the goals of the game are quite similar.
To be honest I don't think we can easily find a way, but I cannot prove it :)!
I found no way to switch both elephants and knights in the janggi preset first move. Can someone take care of that? Thanks
I noticed a new online shogi magazine. Maybe check it out :) :
To be honest warning is much better than fatal error. That is what tipped me off. It was an overkill in my opinion :)! So, nice change :)!
I actaully do not need that. But it is good to know it is not a bigger problem. Thanks!
I check not having this website blocked or in spam, or something. Anyone else?
I kept getting this error today:
Fatal Error: Since email accounts at gmail.com cannot receive email from us, no email has been sent.
What does it mean?
It seems that I cannot make a challenge in the game named Crab Chess. Anyone any idea why?
I think HG's idea could work. It is along the lines of what I was thinking but somewhat better put. There should be a clearer rule though but fading away (never to 100%) of the results is a reasonable concept :)!
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You mean something like open office?