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Comments by rescharn
Harm, let me then focus on your method to have one engine play itself other using different armies: I am convinced - so please correct me if need be - that your engine has implemented just that value scheme, you are talking about. Suppose, that true values probably are somehow different from the built in figures. Then your engine will throw away underestimated pieces too cheap and keep overestimated too dear. Thus it will start and avoid a lot of trades in unjustified manner. And the bad payload for this is, that you are not able to detect it, because equal engines are blind to penalize each other for such mistakes. And in the end therefore such tests tend to become a self fulfilling prophecy.
HGM: It is pure luck, that chess computer program strengths accompanied our masters for a time. Nobody will try to win a sprint against a Porsche, because the difference is even more obvious. So it does not tell anything about how to handle a subject, when different species are competing. As for our both chess programs, which are obviously of different maturity, you can find out, which is currently more successful, but that does not mean, that the winning one is based on 'more correct' ideas. Ideas are rarely implemented in equal quality. Maybe it needs a lot of approaches of different people to have a decision on such a question after a long time period.
Well, I recalculated the values for both piece types using my last published model (which probably is not perfect ;-) ): High Priestess: 8x8: 6+1/28; 10x8: 6+5/36; 10x10: 6+19/45 Minister: 8x8: 6+5/7; 10x8: 6+3/4; 10x10: 6+44/45 Let me admit, that now it seems to me more impressive, to scale piece values no longer to a Pawn normalised as 1, instead to do it using a Knight normalised to 3. This remains neutral to the pieces' values relative to each other, but it seems to create more comparable value series. The High Priestess' strength is more vulnerable by a decreasing board size. Values of both types tend to become equal at an unlimited board size.
Aberg variation of Capablanca's Chess. Different setup and castling rules. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Maybe it could be interesting to read some ideas of mine at http://www.10x8.net/Compu/schachwert1_e.html .
Excuse me, when writing an old suggestion how to reduce tactical draws (where material does not force a draw): Instead of only accepting or refuting a draw the opponent player should have the right to simply change the sides (because the suggestor obviously is convinced that would be no disadvantage). A draw should be possible only after at least one such a change of sides and a minimum of five moves following it.
Aberg variation of Capablanca's Chess. Different setup and castling rules. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]To H.G.M.: There is no need for a polemic like: '1) Joker80 knows how to play a game of 10x8 Chess, and does so better than Smirf (oh, sorry about the 'insult', how politically incorrect of me to say such a thing...)' SMIRF still is behind, but that does not necessarily imply anything for used value models. The majority of Jokers losses were reached by SMIRF type engines, but I hesitate to derive some value related conclusions from that.
SMIRF lost several games by making a weird move instead of continuing a mating process. This has nothing to do with value models, but is related to other internal problems. So I hope e.g. for SMIRF-o-glot to ask for SMIRF's move decision explicitely instead of simply taking the move posted last as the optimal one during its thinking process, because there might indeed be a change during the last microseconds especially in such situations. Anyway SMIRF still does not handle mating scenarios correctly, which leads to some thrown away victories.
There are a lot of other design problems within SMIRF, thus I could explain its losses yet without having to throw away my piece value model.
To Derek: we know how much work you have invested in your piece value theory, so I understand, that you are somehow enraged on H.G.M.'s interpretations of his attempts. But all individuals I know to be investigating in that matter are strong-minded people. Thus please do not misinterpret their persisting in their viewpoints as pure animosity. To all: I understand, that the clearness and consistence of a value defining model is not enough to convince doubters to the 'truth' of such models. That way generated values have to be verified in practise. The easy part of that is to compare such figures to those experienced from 8x8 chess through centuries. The difficult rest of verification is to apply claimed value scales e.g. in 10x8 and to check out if they are well-working. But it is unsufficient, to simply optimize a bunch of values within a given variant, because that does not establish a neutral theory, which could be applied on other scenarios, to be falsified or verified therein. A valid theory's conclusions have to exceed their input by magnitudes. Watching the results of H.G.M.'s very interesting 'Battle of the Goths' experiments, what does this induce for our value theory discussion? In my opinion, there hardly could be derived anything concerning this question. Of course, some games have to be reviewed intensively for to see, whether there would have been structural imbalances. But to me it seems impossible to separate those engines' positional abilities from their tactical power, which is obviously very depending from the maturity of their implementation. My program SMIRF is - as repeatedly stated - my first self-written playing chessengine, also often repaired and modified, but still caught in its initial naive design with a lot of detected basic weaknesses. Its detail evaluation as an example is incredible slow. Mating phases of games lead to concurring incompatible evaluations in SMIRF, thus some games will be lost even though having a clear mating line in view. SMIRF has been programmed without using foreign sources. By all of that it is no ripe engine - and thus I plan to put my experiences into a follow-up engine Octopus, which nevertheless will need a lot of time. Derek and I have experimented with having different models applied to equal engines, identical beside of those different value approaches. Though this seems to be the more relyable approach for to verify value models, it nevertheless has structural weaknesses too, as in the realization of such a program there will be a lot of parts, reflecting the ideas of its creator, making it not completely independent of the ideas of that programmer. So what is the arriving conclusion from H.G.M.'s event? SMIRF has to be rewritten as Octopus to become more mature. And maybe H.G.M. might try to embed his value model within a verificatable abstract theory, if he would like to widen its acceptance.
A short remark on piece values: first, my published model is not my last word, I still am working on that. As I have stated already an amount of time ago, piece values are depending from the percentage of emptyness of the board. It concerns the mobility value part of sliding pieces. This would lead to dynamic piece values of sliding pieces slowly growing through a game. SMIRF unfortunately is far away from that. Then I modified my thoughts on the nature of a bishop pair value bonus, which in fact had not been implemented in SMIRF yet at all. Errornously I derived that value modification from the fact, that a Bishop can reach merely one half of a board. But this is only a legal but misleading view on that strange effect. Today I am relating this paradoxon to the hideability of pieces more valued than a Bishop. Thus there is a chance to positionally devalue an opposite single Bishop by moving ones big pieces preferred on squares coloured oppositely to the Bishop's one. But that view demands the value bonus not to be applied statically by summing up piece values and such a bonus, but by writing an appropriate positional detail evaluation (as I have done intuitively in SMIRF). To try to find out piece values by having teams of different armies fighting each other seems to be very promising at a first sight. But as you see in those huge table bases: a lot of optimal play is done pure combinatorically and could end contrarily, if placing one piece only a step aside. Thus it is hard to understand why to densly relate outcomes of a games and piece values. In an extreme constellation having King+Knight against King (which is a draw anyway) such an approach would lead to the conclusion, that a Knight is valued to nothing.
Rules of Chess: En passant capture FAQ. Answers to some questions about the en passant capture rule.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The question: 'Can other pieces except pawns capture en passant?' has been negated. But that is not quite exact. I will explain this: There had been a time in ancient chess, where pieces had been allowed to make only one single step. Thus chess had been a very slow game. Later in Italy chess has been modernized: the sliding of some pieces has been invented, an initial double step of pawns was introduced, and castlings were designed. But those moves have not been regarded each to be a continuous move, instead they had been interpreted as a serie of independent moves, by which chess could be sped up. This point of view leads by exception of the sliding moves (to avoid trouble when those pieces do capturings themselves) to the situation, that an opponent was allowed to answer by capturing also to any of the intermediately used target fields. Now only pawns are allowed to answer that way on pawns double step moves. And so it is clear, why that e.p move is merely allowed in the intermediate following move. But looking at castling moves you see, that a king still is not allowed to pass any square, where he would be in chess. That is nothing else, than that every enemy piece would be allowed to capture him via e.p..
Capablanca Random Chess. Randomized setup for Capablanca chess. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]In the case of a real free castling there is the possibility to also have castlings, wherein the king is making only one single step. Then an encoding as e.g. Kd1 is not sufficient to distinguish a castling move from a simple King's move. Moreover in traditional chess O-O and O-O-O is used. Thus the representation should be very related to that. using O-O-x has more common parts to those traditional forms than O-x. Thus I am preferring that. By posting here I intended to investigate the status quo of writing down castling moves in variants, before I would start to implement such abilities in SMIRF's successor application Octopus.
Hi Sam, there seem to be different kinds of free castling, thus including one-step-castlings. This is one reason and another, because a castling should be obviously in its notation Thus I would prefer adaptions to the classic notation. Another question is, that a GUI should be more flexible in accepting several kinds of notations. Nevertheless I try to unify such notations into a common mimic.
Well, having no suggestions yet, I made some myself: All castlings placing the King three squares from the left white side will be written as O-O-O (standard). All castlings placing the King two squares from the right white side will be written as O-O (standard). All other castlings will be written e.g. O-O-b terminated by the King's target column letter, here 'b'. Would that be acceptable?
I am just thinking it over, whether to support also free castling in SMIRF - the variation, where the King makes at least two steps, to enable an unambigious move entering via a GUI. Then a lot of other chess variants would be able to be supported. But there is a question left: how is the regular notation for those castlings? O-O and O-O-O would not at all be sufficient here. SMIRF is downloadable at: http://www.10x8.net/down/SmNewSetup.exe
ChessV
. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]ChessV 0.9.3 seems positionally much improved. I have no more noticed that it would take over the opposites colour when being under pressure. It navigates excellent through the opening. But it might be tactically weaker now, and it does not always handle castling rules correct. See the following Embassy Chess game with SMIRF, where it refutes at least Black's castling move:
[Event 'Embassychess Game'][Site 'CHESSBOX-MAC-XP']
[Date '2007.10.15']
[Time '21:36:10']
[Round 'Testgame 1 min / move']
[White 'ChessV 0.9.3 64+16 MB Cache']
[Black 'Smirf MS-169c']
[Result '0-1']
[Annotator 'RS']
[SetUp '1']
[FEN 'rnbqkmcbnr/pppppppppp/10/10/10/10/PPPPPPPPPP/RNBQKMCBNR w mKQkq - 0 1']
1. e4 Nh6 2. Nh3 g6 3. Nc3 Nc6 4. g4 d6 5. g5 Nj5 6. d3 h5 7. Be3 Ci6 8. Qd2
Bg4 9. f3 Be6 10. O-O-O Nb4 11. d4 c5 12. d5 Bd7 13. Cf2 Qb6 14. f4 Cg7 15. Ka1
Cxc3 16. Qxc3 Bxc3 17. bxc3 Bb5 18. Md2 Nxa2 19. Kxa2 Md7 20. Ra1 Be2 21. Rb1
Qa6+ 22. Kb2 Mb6+ 23. Mb3 Ma4+ 24. Kc1 Bg4 25. Mb5 Ma2+ 26. Kd2 Qxb5 27. Rxb5
Ma1 28. Ri1 Mf1+ 29. Kd3 c4+ 30. Kd4 O-O-O 0-1
2007-2008 Chess Variants Design Contest. Chess variant inventors gather round! We're doing it again! Exact nature of contest to be determined with YOUR help!![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Because the rules still are unclear to me, I have decided not to work on a 'Chess with Varying Squares' variant entry any longer this time.
Chess with Varying Squares would be interesting to me. I am working on a variant, which is modifying (under special rules) the nature of squares as an alternative to traditional chess piece moves. I would like to call it Taboo Chess. But I am not sure, whether this proposal would conform to the current contest's rules.
Capablanca Random Chess. Randomized setup for Capablanca chess. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Hi Sam, again I provide a link for chess variant insiders like you: link to locally make SMIRF BC-168b available. As often repeated there also is an improved version for real donators. ;-) Best regards, Reinhard.
P.S.: could you please specify the PGN notation concerning your 10x8 extended castling rules? Because traditional O-O or O-O-O would not be always sufficient, as I presume.
Optimized Chess - 8H x 10W. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]10x8 Chess is an exiting synthesis of decimal and dual approaches to board geometries preserving the Pawns' typical way to promotion and supporting all double combinations of Chess' elementary gaits of Rook, Bishop and Knight.
Even though CRC covers most of the relevant named 10x8 starting arrays (or its mirrors) there is no need to hide some specialized models because of the existing of some more popular or commercial representants. Because of that it is to be welcomed, that some balanced starting arrays will get and improve their own named life.
The public is invited to check out and popularize some of those approaches. But there is no need at all to extinguish references of such, e.g. simply because of the existence of a patented one.
Even though CRC covers most of the relevant named 10x8 starting arrays (or its mirrors) there is no need to hide some specialized models because of the existing of some more popular or commercial representants. Because of that it is to be welcomed, that some balanced starting arrays will get and improve their own named life.
The public is invited to check out and popularize some of those approaches. But there is no need at all to extinguish references of such, e.g. simply because of the existence of a patented one.
Castling in Chess 960. New castling rules for Fischer Random Chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Well John, it is not a case of ignorance, but a case of construction or destruction. You are trying to destruct the idea of a working variant, maybe by reasons, you might be convinced of. Nevertheless it in contrast would be a more constructive task to embed your arguments into an independent context.
It would be counter productive, if friends of the traditional 8x8 Chess variant would be hanging bad words on FRC using the fora of its scene, just as if Chess960 enthusiasts would be trying to convert traditionalists to their favorite by polluting their communication channels to overwhelm that people by pro random arguments.
I have commented Chess480 and its castling at several places. Thus I do not see a need to repeat myself again - moreover at a wrong place.
P.S.: Hi Echelon: I am not a member of HISBOLLAH or AL KAIDA, having no contact to BIN LADEN, also do not support any other TERROR organization and do not PLAN to ATTACK or DESTROY US American SKYSCRAPERS or BRIDGES using EXPLOSIVE materials like fluid BLASTING AGENTS or to place SEMTEC BOMBS into AIRPLANES to strike US FLIGHTS or to weaken US TROOPS e.g. by committing ANTHRAX ASSAULTS using TELE-COMMANDED model AIRCRAFTS.
It would be counter productive, if friends of the traditional 8x8 Chess variant would be hanging bad words on FRC using the fora of its scene, just as if Chess960 enthusiasts would be trying to convert traditionalists to their favorite by polluting their communication channels to overwhelm that people by pro random arguments.
I have commented Chess480 and its castling at several places. Thus I do not see a need to repeat myself again - moreover at a wrong place.
P.S.: Hi Echelon: I am not a member of HISBOLLAH or AL KAIDA, having no contact to BIN LADEN, also do not support any other TERROR organization and do not PLAN to ATTACK or DESTROY US American SKYSCRAPERS or BRIDGES using EXPLOSIVE materials like fluid BLASTING AGENTS or to place SEMTEC BOMBS into AIRPLANES to strike US FLIGHTS or to weaken US TROOPS e.g. by committing ANTHRAX ASSAULTS using TELE-COMMANDED model AIRCRAFTS.
The challenge already has been decided. Chess480 seems to be so uninteresting to the most logically thinking people, that you seem to see a need to move that strange discussion to the Chess960 variant page, where it is in fact absolutely misplaced. Simply try to continue that discussion on a more appropriate place and analyse the echo, which might be raised there.
P.S.: Hi Echelon: I am not a member of HISBOLLAH or AL KAIDA, having no contact to BIN LADEN, also do not support any other TERROR organization and do not PLAN to ATTACK or DESTROY US American SKYSCRAPERS or BRIDGES using EXPLOSIVE materials like fluid BLASTING AGENTS or to place SEMTEC BOMBS into AIRPLANES to strike US FLIGHTS or to weaken US TROOPS e.g. by committing ANTHRAX ASSAULTS using TELE-COMMANDED model AIRCRAFTS.
P.S.: Hi Echelon: I am not a member of HISBOLLAH or AL KAIDA, having no contact to BIN LADEN, also do not support any other TERROR organization and do not PLAN to ATTACK or DESTROY US American SKYSCRAPERS or BRIDGES using EXPLOSIVE materials like fluid BLASTING AGENTS or to place SEMTEC BOMBS into AIRPLANES to strike US FLIGHTS or to weaken US TROOPS e.g. by committing ANTHRAX ASSAULTS using TELE-COMMANDED model AIRCRAFTS.
To those, who intend to change Chess960 via its castling rules: Please, leave Chess960 as it is. If you are convinced to have a better idea for to improve 8x8 Chess, then please do not hesitate to suggest an own variant, good luck! P.S.: Hi Echelon: I am not a member of HISBOLLAH or AL KAIDA, having no contact to BIN LADEN, also do not support any other TERROR organization and do not PLAN to ATTACK or DESTROY US American SKYSCRAPERS or BRIDGES using EXPLOSIVE materials like fluid BLASTING AGENTS or to place SEMTEC BOMBS into AIRPLANES to strike US FLIGHTS or to weaken US TROOPS e.g. by committing ANTHRAX ASSAULTS using TELECOMMANDED model AIRCRAFTS.
Capablanca Random Chess. Randomized setup for Capablanca chess. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]A real DEATHBLOW to email contacts with US American people Well, because I am not interested in having my email postings 'legally' verified by the CIA, NSA and other 'peace securing' organisations, even without finding any suspicion against my person, I will no longer correspond with people from USA by email. Please try to avoid the USA to become a totalitarian country. So please join boycotting that raising freedom killing USA practice. Reinhard.
Hi Derek, concerning the differences of our piece value models let me repeat to mention, that I later will work out a refined approach, where piece values (more precisely their mobility part) will depend on the percentage of free squares on the board. It could be then, that in practical games that could even more hide those theoretically existing differences. And I repeat to point out, that as pieces were exchanged not only their average piece values will be removed from the board but also their positional influences. My program SMIRF puts that all together when calculating the new evaluation after an exchange. Thus it is not convincing to focus merely on average piece value differences. When I see, that here a discussion is running on evaluating other game pieces, let me add some thoughts. Chess is an inertial game, that means, its evaluation is changing slowly through the game, despite of tactical errors. There are other games like Shogi, where more dynamic elements are changing that kind of lazyness. Watching evaluation trees there leads to instable search results, finally having some kind of a randomly generated value overlay. In other words, the evaluation does not that much depend on average piece values as compared to Chess, but instead much more on surprisingly rising tactical occurrences. Also CRC may be positioned a small step nearer to that behaviour seen from Chess. During the last days I also have thought over the problem on how to create a meaningful evaluation model for the game of Arimaa, which will be extremely different from Chess. I have seen there on its discussion site how people are trying to establish position depending piece values. But I doubt that this would be a promising way to do that job. Actually I believe, that pieces interdepending constellations there are much more important than such an elementary try.
SMIRF
. Program that plays various 8x10 chess variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Well, Sam, I am not that rich, so it would help somehow to have some minor contributions e.g. for to buy some more recent development tools and for to update my hardware from time to time. But it is more disturbing to experience people seeing no value in such software as long it is free. Thus freeware is devaluating the scene and does a bull's job to chess variant software. Making the entry version of SMIRF a donationware should have been signaling that message, but most of SMIRF's users nevertheless mixed that kind of releasing up with freeware. Another demotivating detail is, that though I have tried to publish all of my chess pages using both German and English languages, no (as far as I know) native English speaking chess page had been turned to become bilingual too by also supporting German, that way following my example. This makes me feel like a second class person. Therefore I have decided to no longer continue such an approach, instead I will merely use my German language, if I ever would relaunch my web site again. Thus developing Octopus out of SMIRF's bones is done rather slowly and privately. That would not exclude really interested people from contacting me or following the project, nevertheless I am ignoring the public, e.g. by chosing Mac OS X as development system, saying 'sorry' to MS Vista, and by redirecting my old site to a small German language blogging site. Reinhard.
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This hardly occurs, because this is SELF-PLAY.
Probably you have not understood my intention. On games between our engines you commented to some trades, that your program would never do such. And this I suppose is true. Thus your engine vs. engine games are avoiding such type of trades, and never experiencing, whether such trades would be beneficial or not.
Trades in your type of engine vs. engine games will happen only, if both engines agree in the equality of that trades, or if one engine has already come into an inferior situation and could not avoid a bad trade. But then the game might allready be decided.
Thus there are no trades caused by different views of pieces values, which could make a trade attractive for BOTH sides. Thus your model is never verified at such critical moments.