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Indistinguishable Chess. Player pieces indistinguishable from each other. Board squares are indistinguishable. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝Gary Gifford wrote on Sun, Oct 26, 2008 08:30 PM UTC:
Mr. Muller: Thanks for the comment. You are correct, of course; in that the game could easily be implemented for computer play... and I suppose that such an implementation would at least provide a good workout for a human. But for a match such as Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, the machine would be playing Chess and the Human would be disadvantaged due to playing Indistinguishable Chess. I could easily make a pre-set for I.C.... but I imagine, at home, a dual-color set would be referenced by a player. I like your draught version idea using the marking on the reverse. In fact, in a physical chess set with solid bottoms, all the white pieces could be marked as B or W on the bottoms. If you do not want to create a separate game, I would be glad to add your Muller Variation to the I.C. page.

Mr. Smith: Also, thanks for your comment. You are correct that removing the grid is an option. I actually considered that for a while. But rejected it because, in the endgame especially, it seems it would be easy to place a piece or pawn off-center and the chaos factor would kick in with pieces ending up in the wrong place in a face-to-face encounter... but again, a computer would always be seeing the correct algebraic coordinates. If you want, I can mention a 'Smith Variation' with grid-less board in the rules.

-------------------------------------------------- For 'fun games' and 'practice games' I have no objections to the PCs or CV couriers for this game. But for something like a rated match, I think face-to-face is the only fair system.

I suppose a program for I.C. could have different levels, where the weaker levels would have random forgetfulness factors... but then, how would you convey to the computer that it was wrong and penalize it? It could, of course, keep a true-reference position to compare to its random forgetfulness.