6 ms·

Survival in chessland [pdf]

128 points by bgschulman31 7y ago

symmetricsaurus 7y ago
Tom7 made a video also: https://youtu.be/DpXy041BIlA https://youtu.be/DpXy041BIlA If you haven’t seen them his other videos are well worth watching as well.
- pronoiac 7y ago
  He's a mad genius! I like his compiler that generates executables made up only of printable characters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_DrBwkiJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_DrBwkiJA / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16312317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16312317 He's super playful and awesomely smart!
- lemoing 7y ago
  I came across his channel recently and have been watching as many videos as I can. His channel reminds me why I got into computer science in the first place.
modernerd 7y ago
This is beautifully written and worth downloading. “Ben does not prefer to use the shift key, a typographic quirk I replicated faithfully here even though it burns my eyes:” The premise is: “if you were forced to be one of the chess pieces, which piece should you choose to give you the best chance of survival?” The king is the obvious choice, but the author assumes kings will have to be sacrificed under victory conditions or when time runs out. This is lovely: “Many games also end in a time forfeit, which is like the king's poor diet and lifestyle choices leading to a death by natural causes.” The author uses 500 million chess games from lichess.org to estimate each piece's survival probability, and even makes heatmaps for which squares each piece usually dies on. For those digging for the answer, it's in figure 3 under 4.1. It differs depending on the game style (bullet, blitz, classical). There's one piece that's common to almost all categories with a 70% chance of survival.
thom 7y ago
Fascinating stuff! Sadly Windows only, otherwise I'd be interested in seeing if the results are any different run against KingBase or another collection of mostly GM games.
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  Windows only? Lichess is a web app first, works great on any modern browser. There are Android, and iOS native apps, a few 3rd party clients, and no Mac or Linux official clients, but you're definitely not limited to Windows.
  - throwawaylolx 7y ago
    GP is probably talking about the code to process and generate results
  - thom 7y ago
    I just meant the code behind the paper, it'd need some work to get it compiling in Linux.
k_sze 7y ago
Just me or something isn't quite right about the numbers? Intuitively, shouldn't the survival rates of the white and black kings add up to exactly 100% in each type of game, even given the rules and interpretations that the author laid out at the beginning of the article?
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  Presumably draws were counted as both surviving? The author suggested two different ways to count a draw ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
akkartik 7y ago
Such a chess game actually plays out in the novel "Carrion Comfort" by Dan Simmons.

128 points by bgschulman31 7y ago

Tom7 made a video also: https://youtu.be/DpXy041BIlA https://youtu.be/DpXy041BIlA If you haven’t seen them his other videos are well worth watching as well.

pronoiac 7y ago
He's a mad genius! I like his compiler that generates executables made up only of printable characters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_DrBwkiJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_DrBwkiJA / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16312317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16312317 He's super playful and awesomely smart!
lemoing 7y ago
I came across his channel recently and have been watching as many videos as I can. His channel reminds me why I got into computer science in the first place.

modernerd 7y ago

This is beautifully written and worth downloading. “Ben does not prefer to use the shift key, a typographic quirk I replicated faithfully here even though it burns my eyes:” The premise is: “if you were forced to be one of the chess pieces, which piece should you choose to give you the best chance of survival?” The king is the obvious choice, but the author assumes kings will have to be sacrificed under victory conditions or when time runs out. This is lovely: “Many games also end in a time forfeit, which is like the king's poor diet and lifestyle choices leading to a death by natural causes.” The author uses 500 million chess games from lichess.org to estimate each piece's survival probability, and even makes heatmaps for which squares each piece usually dies on. For those digging for the answer, it's in figure 3 under 4.1. It differs depending on the game style (bullet, blitz, classical). There's one piece that's common to almost all categories with a 70% chance of survival.

thom 7y ago

Fascinating stuff! Sadly Windows only, otherwise I'd be interested in seeing if the results are any different run against KingBase or another collection of mostly GM games.

LeifCarrotson 7y ago
Windows only? Lichess is a web app first, works great on any modern browser. There are Android, and iOS native apps, a few 3rd party clients, and no Mac or Linux official clients, but you're definitely not limited to Windows.
- throwawaylolx 7y ago
  GP is probably talking about the code to process and generate results
- thom 7y ago
  I just meant the code behind the paper, it'd need some work to get it compiling in Linux.

k_sze 7y ago

Just me or something isn't quite right about the numbers? Intuitively, shouldn't the survival rates of the white and black kings add up to exactly 100% in each type of game, even given the rules and interpretations that the author laid out at the beginning of the article?

6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
Presumably draws were counted as both surviving? The author suggested two different ways to count a draw ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

akkartik 7y ago

Such a chess game actually plays out in the novel "Carrion Comfort" by Dan Simmons.