Latest Ratings and Comments

Not sure this is the right place for my comment, as it may apply much more to Game Courier than Chess. Anyway, I was trying to use the Record feature for the chess preset. I entered 1.e2-e4 1.e7-e5 2.f1-c4 b8-c6 3.d1-f3 c6-d4 4.f3-f7 successfully (a version of Scholar's mate trap). However, when I tried to do the same thing but also insert "| 3.g8-f6 //is a better move." after Black's 3rd move, I got an error message saying I cannot move my opponent's piece, after I clicked on the 'View' button (that is, I unsuccessfully tried to enter a variation plus comment after the 3rd Black move of the main continuation).

I'm wondering if Game Courier's Record feature isn't fully working properly. In any event, I've yet to see a single webpage on CVP where a recorded game(s) have been offered by the author, and maybe that's no coincidence.

Nice!

@Luigi, Can you give an example?  I've not encountered this.

What game/preset?  (This comment thread is the general Game Courier one, not attached to a particular preset.)

I had similar problems in Shogi, when I tried to search check drops in addition to captures. Some lines just continue forever, and with depth-first that is of course fatal. This looks especially stupid when alternative moves to the infinite line in many places include a mate-in-1, which would have alpha-beta pruned the infinite line had they been searched first. So I tried a scheme with an iteratively deepened QS that would back up score intervals rather than one-sided score bounds (and would return {standPat, INF} for QS nodes with captures that were too deep to search), deepening it until the interval in the QS root collapsed to a single value. This way you would find the closest forcible (through QS moves) mate before searching any deeper lines. But this still wasn't enough to make the problem disappear, so I abandoned that again, and only search captures now.

The problem is that this is really very wrong in games with piece drops. Even recapture exchanges are often meaningless there, as the capture of a protected piece might give the opponent the piece in hand that he needs for an all-check-drops mate, so that you cannot afford to recapture. It seems Bonanza in every QS node first does a 3-ply checks-only search to see if it can checkmate that way, and if it cannot searches only captures (or stand-pat).

Even most engines for orthodox chess limit the search of checks to the first two ply of QS. They are furthermore selective in what checks they search, and usually prune those that can be evaded by a SEE > 0 capture on the checking piece.

It is still an open question for me how, when you have a QS that also is controlled by a depth parameter, you can best increase the tree size in an iterative deepening scheme. The simplest way would be to just keep the QS depth fixed, and iterate the depth of the full-width search as usual. I suspect this is very sub-optimal, though, as it requires the tactics that QS misses because of the depth limitation to be discovered by the full-width part. Which is not only the most expensive thing you could do in the leading plies from the position that was too complex, but adds to the tree everywhere. It leads to the complex tactics being resolved only when the branches ending in simple tactics (presumably the large majority) have already been deepened too, while the resolved score could be such that it upsets the entire tree, making most of the deepened lines irrelevant.

Increasing the depth of individual QS until they converge OTOH leads to very much (possibly infinite) effort on QS that in the end might turn out to have scores that makes the branch leading to them irrelevant. Iteratively increasing the QS depth limit in the tree as a whole before increasing the depth of the full-width search would waste a lot of time walking the same full-width tree in parts where you encounter only QS that have already converged for the current depth limit.

I have the feeling it should be possible to control the search depth with a single parameter from the root, which would both increase the QS depth limit and the full-width depth as it grows. E.g. with a QS that does an M-ply all-capture search followed by unlimited-depth recapture-only, you could keep track of whether the QS actually did prune any captures that were not recaptures. If there were, M was not large enough to converge the QS, and would have to be increased. The search could be made to converge the QS first, before being allowed to search any non-captures. E.g. by counting each QS ply as half a full-width ply, and when an N-ply search is requested, start with a QS there, increasing the QS depth limit to at most 2N. If QS converges before that, it all moves with a d=N-1 reply (or applicably further reduced), if not, it just returns the unconverged QS result (signalling to the parent that it cannot yet switch to full-width).

The ‘W’ and ‘B’ ranks at the top and bottom of the board. I also just realized that you can capture pieces by dropping, which shouldn't be allowed. If possible, could that be fixed as well?

Wow, QS explosion is a serious problem.  Now that I have allowed all check evasions in the QSearch, I have my search stack overflowing very quickly in Gross Chess and my stack supports a depth of 128!  After four plies of QS it considers only recaptures and check evasions and I still had over a HUNDRED plies.  I figured something had to be broken with my 3-fold repetition detection, but not so...  In Gross Chess you can literally have over a hundred consecutive moves of nothing by check evasions and recaptures to the last square without triggering repetition.  I would not have thought it possible had I not spent a couple hours manually stepping though about 50 plies until I was convinced it was for real.  (It has a lot to do with the cannons - you can often escape check by moving into the path of your own cannon to become a screen and check the opponent king.)

So I appreciate your previous message or I would probably have been at a loss as to what to do about this.  I've now switched to this:  first four plies of QS are all captures and check evasions; after four plies it switches to only recaptures and check evasions; after eight plies of QS it starts to allow standing pat even when in check (returning the static evaluation rather than -INFINITY.)  This has stopped the search explosion.  I'm now running a 1600 game Capablanca match against FairyMax to ensure this doesn't hurt my search strength too much.  (Seeing as most games don't have the kind of search explosion problems that Gross does but I'd like to keep the search function the same across games if possible.)

I'm sorry, I do not understand your question.  The barracks?

Yeah, I was generating all check evasions in QS, I just forgot to make that exception when it switches to recpature only.  I added the limit because the QS explosion was so bad it basically didn't move when I implemented Evolution Chess.

Please forgive me for noticing septem, not septum.

I think the easiest solution is just to make stalemate a win so king + wildebeast can win against bare king.

I don't see any need to change the promotion rules though.  Even if you don't change stalemate, promotion is not an issue.  You are only forced to promote to wildebeast if you do not have a queen, in which case you promote to a queen and can checkmate easily.  The only other case I see is the unusual position where you don't want to promote to a queen because that would stalement immediately, but since the horsemen promote on the 7th rank I don't think that is possible.

Nor can I ?! And I cannot delete so I can’t use the address?!

Hi, it's always good to hear criticism. And i think you've got it right.

Personally i give you the pieces i much like when playing Musketeer Chess: Hawk, Unicorn +++ and my favorite is the Archbishop combining Bishop and Knight abilities. I much like sacrificing my Queen for an Archbishop !!

Musketeer Chess idea was to get rid of the big amount of draws and also opening learning (long theoretical lines). The idea is also to give black a more important role by deciding the final combination of pieces, adapting his strategy to white's choice which will lower for sure the importance of white's advantage as the side who begins the game; But this needs for sure a precise play.

You pointed out the fact that the Board is overcrowded. Of course it becomes a problem if you choose to gate you r pieces whithout a prior clear strategy and this will hamper you from exploiting the huge potential of the new pieces.

The newly added pieces are strong and they bring so much excitment and tactics from the first move ! So the slightest lack of attention can be punished (more spectacular wins) but also if you lower your attention even with a huge material advantage on the board, your opponent can surprise you and mate you using the newest pieces whom some can mate alone.

Yes, Musketeer Chess is not a perfect game, but Classic Chess became mostly a game of "knowledge" and opening learning and is for sure less attractive for average kids and players that want to improve their level but are frustrated by this learning.

Elite tournaments are less spectacular and games most usually finish with draws.

Thank you. I appreciate it