51 ms·

Fairer Chess: A Reversal of Two Opening Moves in Chess Creates Balance

112 points by sova 5y ago

Asraelite 5y ago
Something somewhat similar happens in the game of Connect6. Connect 4 and Connect 5 (aka Gomoku) significantly favor the first player, but Connect6 follows a BWWBBWW... pattern where each player places two stones per move expect for the first move where only one is placed. It ends up being very balanced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect6
fsckboy 5y ago
this is amazing! white gets the first tempo on the first move, black gets the first tempo on the second move, and then white gets the first tempo on remaining moves, and black's chances are improved. I wonder what it would be like to continue the pattern? it would drastically alter the game as there would be many more opportunities to take pieces, but if it could be grokked it might be fun. all the variants that breath a little new life into the game can be fun for semi serious players, I find.
wpasc 5y ago
To me it seems as if this paper's conclusion is hurt by its data selection (of openings). It uses Stockfish and examines openings like the Ruy Lopez and Queen's Gambit to evaluate the game. But using this new gameplay style, presumably new openings would emerge as predominant openings with the current very played (at a high level) openings potentially falling out of favor. Many of the famous openings that are still used by top players were elaborated and built over centuries. Stockfish is pretty incredible but it can't solve chess (yet). Meaning, that if you only examine the current most popular openings you can only draw a conclusion based on those start points but you have potentially omitted what could be new ones. Potentially, with this move ordering there may be an opening for white or for black that is extremely imbalanced, but the move ordering to get there is currently beyond stockfish's depth from the start position (or any starting positions they tried). Unless I misunderstood their methods. Still pretty interesting IMO
- mquander 5y ago
  I think maybe you misunderstood their methods? They explicitly discuss the most obvious "novel" openings that wouldn't transpose to traditional openings, like 1. e4 d5/dxe4 2. Nc3/Nxe4, or 1. d4 c5/cxd4 2. c3/cxd4.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 5y ago
    Note: after 1. e4 d5/dxe4 2. Nc3/Nxe4 Qd5, White's only option to maintain an advantage is to play 3. Nc3, transposing into a mainline Scandinavian. On the other hand, 2. ... BF5 3. Ng3 Bg6 effectively gives black a Caro Kann two knights variation(1. e4 c6 2. Nc3 d5 3. Nf3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Bf5 5. Ng3 Bg6), but with the moves c6 and Nf3 omitted. This helps black more than white, since c6 hampers the development of Black's knight. As white, I would probably attempt something like 1. e4 d5/dxe4 2. c4/f3, sacrificing a pawn for development and hoping to play d4 to get a big centre(e.g 1. e4 d5/dxe4 2. c4/f3 exf3 3. Nxf3 Bg4 4. d4 Nc6 5. d5 Ne5 6. Be2 Nxf3+ 7. Bxf3 Bxf3 8. Qxf3 Nf6 9. 0-0 when white has a lead in development, central control and pressure along the f file for the small price of one pawn(though I'm sure black has a better line than this)). 2. d4/d5 might also be interesting, depending on whether en passant is legal afterwards :P Because I find the mainline Scandi to be dreadfully boring, I've been experimenting with playing 2. Nc3 with white. The tempting 2. ... d4 equalises but leads to a more complex game, with white's night rerouting to g3. Black's will often seize the centre with e5 and c5, but white gets attacking chances with Nf5 ideas as well as playing for the f4 break. The frustrating downside is that black can just play 2. ... dxe4 and force me to pick between the scandi I'm trying to avoid and a Caro Kann where black has already equalised...
- bonzini 5y ago
  Yeah, against e4 why would black play anything but d5 followed immediately by dxe4? That would basically turn 1. e4 into the Englund gambit (an awful opening starting with 1. d4 e5 2. dxe5) with reversed colors, giving a clear advantage for black. The next two moves for white would let him equalize, but still the Ruy Lopez is unlikely to occur.
  - waterhouse 5y ago
reedf1 5y ago
As a casual chess player I'm not sure more drawish chess is something we want? I know there has been some exploration into a chess variation without castling which apparently can lead to more vibrant aggressive chess due to the king being stuck in the center of the board.
- gerdesj 5y ago
  To a casual bystander (who at least knows the rules), castling seems a bit arbitrary and so do the other "extras" - en passant et al. What would happen if chess was reduced to purely "normal" piece moves? What happens if pawns lose their initial two square move? Obviously it would reduce the space of potential games by quite a lot but would it reduce chess to draughts/checkers? Shall I pick my own stake to be burned at?
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > To a casual bystander (who at least knows the rules), castling seems a bit arbitrary and so do the other "extras" - en passant et al. Those rules were added in to make faster games. Taking them out would slow the game down, and we've at least a hundred years of the new rules (faster games) being preferred.
    - gerdesj 5y ago
      Would you mind pointing me at a canonical source on that please. Chess is way older than a few centuries, so why do the extra rules sidle in and when?
      - sellyme 5y ago
        > Chess is way older than a few centuries, so why do the extra rules sidle in and when? Not exactly what you were asking, but you may be shocked to learn that Chess has had two significant patches very recently - namely clarifying the rules to prevent promoting a pawn to an enemy piece (sometimes causing a smothered mate), and to prevent castling with a pawn promoted to a rook on the 8th rank (annotated humourously as 0-0-0-0-0-0!!). These patches were seemingly implemented in the late 19th century and 1970s respectively, although it's surprisingly hard to find out precisely when.
andy_ppp 5y ago
I’ve been saying for some time the first mover advantage in football penalty shootouts should be removed by doing a Team A/Team B B-A A-B etc. as they do in tennis tiebreaks. I’m not sure if Chess would ever make such a change.
- FinanceAnon 5y ago
  That would be a fairer format, but I've read that the football governing bodies aren't introducing it as it would be more confusing for people.
  - andy_ppp 5y ago
    Haha, I mean I follow football closely and last season with VAR it’s been almost impossible to under the rules the Refs are enforcing.
  - gerdesj 5y ago
    The football (soccer) offside rule is often held up as an example of complication, so I doubt a reordering of penalty kicks will be too hard to follow. Rugby union has several different offside rules - well one rule but it is quite involved. Also they are laws! https://www.world.rugby/the-game/laws/law/10 https://www.world.rugby/the-game/laws/law/10
    - sellyme 5y ago
      > The football (soccer) offside rule is often held up as an example of complication I don't follow the sport much - what's so complex about it? It always seemed fairly simple to me, especially in comparison to other sports' more complex rules (good luck explaining the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern system to someone).
- Someone 5y ago
  FIFA experimented with that and rejected it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_shoot-out_(association_football)#Advantage_to_team_kicking_first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_shoot-out_(association...? ”As part of a trial to reduce a potential first-mover advantage, the IFAB sanctioned in March 2017 to test a different sequence of taking penalties, known as "ABBA", that mirrors the serving sequence in a tennis tiebreak (team A kicks first, team B kicks second) […] During the IFAB's 133rd Annual Business Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland on 22 November 2018, it was agreed that due to the lack of strong support mainly because of its complexity, the ABBA option would no longer be used in future competitions.” I wouldn’t know whether that decision was the best possible, but guess that the popularity of football makes them more resisting to change than other sports (“Never change a winning team”)
dominicjj 5y ago
As a chess variant fan, this is a cool idea that has a lot of potential. I would like to see it extended to include say, the first ten moves. Black may announce a double move any time during the first ten moves after which white gets his double move and then play continues with single alternating moves as usual, with the sole restriction that mate may not be delivered by a double move.
OscarCunningham 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thue%E2%80%93Morse_sequence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thue%E2%80%93Morse_sequence > In mathematics, the Thue–Morse sequence is the binary sequence obtained by starting with 0 and successively appending the Boolean complement of the sequence obtained thus far. The first few steps of this procedure yield the strings 0 then 01, 0110, 01101001, 0110100110010110, and so on, which are prefixes of the Thue–Morse sequence. The full sequence begins 01101001100101101001011001101001....
- sobriquet9 5y ago
  That's not what the paper proposes, though. And doing that would invalidate a lot of chess tactics that rely on alternating moves.
- jameshart 5y ago
  I was wondering whether they were going to follow that sequence - I know it as the ‘fair share’ sequence. It has a number of interesting fairness properties, but I don’t I don’t think I’ve ever seen it suggested for turntaking in a game like Chess.
fsiefken 5y ago
Another way of improving chess would be kasparov10 or a once per year chess960, chess480 starting position. https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-problem-with-chess960 https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-problem-with-chess960
YetAnotherNick 5y ago
> Other expert programs, including Leela Chess Zero and Stockfish, when pitted against each other in the superfinal of the unofficial world computer chess championship (TCEC), give White even greater odds of winning, but the outcome is still a draw in the large majority of games (see https://tcec-chess.com https://tcec-chess.com). Despite the fact that computer programs start play from 50 preselected opening positions in the TCEC superfinal (once as White and once as Black), it is remarkable that Black has not won a single game in the last two TCEC superfinals This line is very dubious. TCEC SuFi openings highly promotes one side over other as otherwise it was seen that almost all matches ends in a draw. It could very well select 1. g4 and black will win all matches. Also there had been an incident where Leela won an opening both with black and white pieces and it happened only once in TCEC history.
sobriquet9 5y ago
Why not let black choose color after first move of white?
- seoaeu 5y ago
  Seems like that would just result in a lookup table of the twenty moves for white and whether you should swap for them
  - andy_ppp 5y ago
    It would probably just end up with only even starting moves being played as people would swap if you played a tricky starting move.
User23 5y ago
One of the most amusing Chess variants I learned as a kid is the one where white gets the full complement of pieces, and black gets only a king, with the proviso that black gets two consecutive moves and can move through check on the first move. This means that black can capture two pieces in a single turn. While white still wins with optimal play, less experienced players playing white will get absolutely wrecked.
JerryDot 5y ago
This paper is pretty awful. Two amateur chess players guessed the best sequences of WBBWW and then plugged the result of their guesses into an engine to statically analyse the position. There is absolutely no chance that they found the best options for either player. The sequencing argument that they make has no real foundation. Introducing double moves could have all kinds of side-effects which they later mention when showing their guesswork-variations but skip over when trying to make the previous "logical" argument. The only semi-useful sentence in this paper is the following: > More light would be shed on this question if the two leading machine-learning chess programs, AlphaZero and Leela Chess Zero, were taught to play with our proposed change in the order of the 3rd and 4th moves from White-Black to Black-White. The rest can be summarised as "We thought of this potential rule change and it seemed to us to be more even for black." If they had wanted to then there are only around 10,000,000 possible game-states after the first WBBWW and potentially looking at computer evaluations of the whole tree of possibilities could be semi-interesting and definitely very achievable. Probably better and easier to guess instead though to be fair.
- ummonk 5y ago
  > If they had wanted to then there are only around 10,000,000 possible game-states after the first WBBWW and potentially looking at computer evaluations of the whole tree of possibilities could be semi-interesting and definitely very achievable. Probably better and easier to guess instead though to be fair. This is what I was expecting them to do from seeing the abstract. Instead they just examined a handful of novel lines and evaluated them with Stockfish. An interesting proposed rules change, but a rather low quality analysis of it.
- shmageggy 5y ago
  Lichess has an API endpoint for their cached analysis, so they could have easily automated at least some of the new tree. Or they could have inserted a couple of `if` statements into Stockfish, recompiled, and simply analyzed the root position. Even calling this a "paper" is a stretch. I'm usually against twitter post threads as content but that seems about the level of analysis that's actually present here.
- dmurray 5y ago
ogogmad 5y ago
What about a pie-slicing approach? White makes the first move, and black decides whether he wants to switch places.
- unanswered 5y ago
  I think a better way to state this would be: player A makes white's first move, then player B decides whether to play white or black. Play proceeds as normal with black to move. But tbh it seems a bit silly; at least TFA realizes there at least naively seems to be more at stake in moves 2 and ..2.
ydnaclementine 5y ago
For comparison, there's a lot of different ways to make chess games more even between differently skilled players through chess handicaps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_(chess)#Main https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_(chess)#Main Paul Morphy (one of the greats) commonly played mortals a rook or more down
zone411 5y ago
At high levels of play and in computer-vs-computer games, the problem is too many draws. This paper's idea would exacerbate this problem. If you want a fairer outcome, just do what's done already and count one match to be two games, one with white, one with black, and five possible outcomes. One interesting variant that I would love to see tried is no-black castling (or no-black-short-castling) chess. Draws would count as wins for black (called Armageddon scoring). You could still play two games (one per side) to get the most fair outcome. This starting position should still allow a large variety of openings and it would always be balanced on the edge without the large dead zone of draws. All chess programs can already play this variant as well, though maybe not most optimally. Chess960 is also a pretty good solution that reduces the value of memorizing openings.
- beardyw 5y ago
  Or maybe award less than half points for a draw?
  - zone411 5y ago
    Some are worried that it might lead to collusion (https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-bilbao-draw-feedback-from-our-readers https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-bilbao-draw-feedback-from-...) but I like it.
Tomminn 5y ago
Fair chess is trivial. The first player chooses white's move. The second player chooses whether to play as black or to take over playing as white. Problem solved. The first player is incentivized to make white's first move as value neutral as possible. It's exactly the same principle as the "sister cut's the cake, brother chooses which piece to take" trick many will have used as kids.
- sellyme 5y ago
  It's also trivial to make chess fair by agreeing that every match ends in a draw. The concern is in how we can make it fair without making it less interesting. The cake-cutting solution would severely reduce opening variety.
  - Tomminn 5y ago
    I fail to see how this would be the case. I think it may even increase opening variety. I think you'd see many more opening with oddly position a-c/f-g file pawns, or horses thrown into the rail. I think it could make for a radically different game opening game that would be just as diverse as the current game. Perhaps more so. I wonder if you misunderstood? Since this is very far from agreeing to a draw at the outset. I meant the cake cutting for only the very first move. Not the subsequent moves. Only the very first move played on the board is incentivized to be value neutral.
    - sellyme 5y ago
      > I wonder if you misunderstood? [...] I meant the cake cutting for only the very first move. No, I got that. > I fail to see how this would be the case. I think it may even increase opening variety. At a high level players will be relatively comfortable with playing at least one opening from any (sensible) opening move, so swapping would offer very little disadvantage in terms of not being prepared. So the decision on whether or not to swap is almost entirely based on how good that opening move is. Now, white has a significant advantage on just about every opening move that's currently played with any regularity. Therefore black will almost always swap, and gain that same advantage. So it's in white's interest to not play those moves, and instead pick whichever moves are as close to 50/50 as possible, so that their opponent cannot get an advantage. The crucial thing to note is that most possible moves white can make are either good (preserve a meaningful advantage for white) or bad (immediately gives advantage to black). There are not many first moves that result in a 50/50 game. Therefore the number of viable first moves is decreased. They're certainly different first moves, and we'd see a lot of variety for a year or two, maybe even up to a decade as people play and learn entirely new lines. But in the long run the number of opening moves that don't immediately give up an advantage would be reduced.
zeteo 5y ago
On the average game of chess white scores 0.55 points and black 0.45. In the age of computers it should be pretty trivial to award black 1.2 points for a win (or some such appropriate number) and vastly improve balance.

112 points by sova 5y ago

Something somewhat similar happens in the game of Connect6. Connect 4 and Connect 5 (aka Gomoku) significantly favor the first player, but Connect6 follows a BWWBBWW... pattern where each player places two stones per move expect for the first move where only one is placed. It ends up being very balanced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect6

fsckboy 5y ago

this is amazing! white gets the first tempo on the first move, black gets the first tempo on the second move, and then white gets the first tempo on remaining moves, and black's chances are improved. I wonder what it would be like to continue the pattern? it would drastically alter the game as there would be many more opportunities to take pieces, but if it could be grokked it might be fun. all the variants that breath a little new life into the game can be fun for semi serious players, I find.

wpasc 5y ago

To me it seems as if this paper's conclusion is hurt by its data selection (of openings). It uses Stockfish and examines openings like the Ruy Lopez and Queen's Gambit to evaluate the game. But using this new gameplay style, presumably new openings would emerge as predominant openings with the current very played (at a high level) openings potentially falling out of favor. Many of the famous openings that are still used by top players were elaborated and built over centuries. Stockfish is pretty incredible but it can't solve chess (yet). Meaning, that if you only examine the current most popular openings you can only draw a conclusion based on those start points but you have potentially omitted what could be new ones. Potentially, with this move ordering there may be an opening for white or for black that is extremely imbalanced, but the move ordering to get there is currently beyond stockfish's depth from the start position (or any starting positions they tried). Unless I misunderstood their methods. Still pretty interesting IMO

mquander 5y ago
I think maybe you misunderstood their methods? They explicitly discuss the most obvious "novel" openings that wouldn't transpose to traditional openings, like 1. e4 d5/dxe4 2. Nc3/Nxe4, or 1. d4 c5/cxd4 2. c3/cxd4.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 5y ago
  Note: after 1. e4 d5/dxe4 2. Nc3/Nxe4 Qd5, White's only option to maintain an advantage is to play 3. Nc3, transposing into a mainline Scandinavian. On the other hand, 2. ... BF5 3. Ng3 Bg6 effectively gives black a Caro Kann two knights variation(1. e4 c6 2. Nc3 d5 3. Nf3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Bf5 5. Ng3 Bg6), but with the moves c6 and Nf3 omitted. This helps black more than white, since c6 hampers the development of Black's knight. As white, I would probably attempt something like 1. e4 d5/dxe4 2. c4/f3, sacrificing a pawn for development and hoping to play d4 to get a big centre(e.g 1. e4 d5/dxe4 2. c4/f3 exf3 3. Nxf3 Bg4 4. d4 Nc6 5. d5 Ne5 6. Be2 Nxf3+ 7. Bxf3 Bxf3 8. Qxf3 Nf6 9. 0-0 when white has a lead in development, central control and pressure along the f file for the small price of one pawn(though I'm sure black has a better line than this)). 2. d4/d5 might also be interesting, depending on whether en passant is legal afterwards :P Because I find the mainline Scandi to be dreadfully boring, I've been experimenting with playing 2. Nc3 with white. The tempting 2. ... d4 equalises but leads to a more complex game, with white's night rerouting to g3. Black's will often seize the centre with e5 and c5, but white gets attacking chances with Nf5 ideas as well as playing for the f4 break. The frustrating downside is that black can just play 2. ... dxe4 and force me to pick between the scandi I'm trying to avoid and a Caro Kann where black has already equalised...
bonzini 5y ago
Yeah, against e4 why would black play anything but d5 followed immediately by dxe4? That would basically turn 1. e4 into the Englund gambit (an awful opening starting with 1. d4 e5 2. dxe5) with reversed colors, giving a clear advantage for black. The next two moves for white would let him equalize, but still the Ruy Lopez is unlikely to occur.
- waterhouse 5y ago

reedf1 5y ago

As a casual chess player I'm not sure more drawish chess is something we want? I know there has been some exploration into a chess variation without castling which apparently can lead to more vibrant aggressive chess due to the king being stuck in the center of the board.

gerdesj 5y ago
To a casual bystander (who at least knows the rules), castling seems a bit arbitrary and so do the other "extras" - en passant et al. What would happen if chess was reduced to purely "normal" piece moves? What happens if pawns lose their initial two square move? Obviously it would reduce the space of potential games by quite a lot but would it reduce chess to draughts/checkers? Shall I pick my own stake to be burned at?
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > To a casual bystander (who at least knows the rules), castling seems a bit arbitrary and so do the other "extras" - en passant et al. Those rules were added in to make faster games. Taking them out would slow the game down, and we've at least a hundred years of the new rules (faster games) being preferred.
  - gerdesj 5y ago
    Would you mind pointing me at a canonical source on that please. Chess is way older than a few centuries, so why do the extra rules sidle in and when?
    - sellyme 5y ago
      > Chess is way older than a few centuries, so why do the extra rules sidle in and when? Not exactly what you were asking, but you may be shocked to learn that Chess has had two significant patches very recently - namely clarifying the rules to prevent promoting a pawn to an enemy piece (sometimes causing a smothered mate), and to prevent castling with a pawn promoted to a rook on the 8th rank (annotated humourously as 0-0-0-0-0-0!!). These patches were seemingly implemented in the late 19th century and 1970s respectively, although it's surprisingly hard to find out precisely when.

andy_ppp 5y ago

I’ve been saying for some time the first mover advantage in football penalty shootouts should be removed by doing a Team A/Team B B-A A-B etc. as they do in tennis tiebreaks. I’m not sure if Chess would ever make such a change.

FinanceAnon 5y ago
That would be a fairer format, but I've read that the football governing bodies aren't introducing it as it would be more confusing for people.
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  Haha, I mean I follow football closely and last season with VAR it’s been almost impossible to under the rules the Refs are enforcing.
- gerdesj 5y ago
  The football (soccer) offside rule is often held up as an example of complication, so I doubt a reordering of penalty kicks will be too hard to follow. Rugby union has several different offside rules - well one rule but it is quite involved. Also they are laws! https://www.world.rugby/the-game/laws/law/10 https://www.world.rugby/the-game/laws/law/10
  - sellyme 5y ago
    > The football (soccer) offside rule is often held up as an example of complication I don't follow the sport much - what's so complex about it? It always seemed fairly simple to me, especially in comparison to other sports' more complex rules (good luck explaining the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern system to someone).
Someone 5y ago
FIFA experimented with that and rejected it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_shoot-out_(association_football)#Advantage_to_team_kicking_first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_shoot-out_(association...? ”As part of a trial to reduce a potential first-mover advantage, the IFAB sanctioned in March 2017 to test a different sequence of taking penalties, known as "ABBA", that mirrors the serving sequence in a tennis tiebreak (team A kicks first, team B kicks second) […] During the IFAB's 133rd Annual Business Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland on 22 November 2018, it was agreed that due to the lack of strong support mainly because of its complexity, the ABBA option would no longer be used in future competitions.” I wouldn’t know whether that decision was the best possible, but guess that the popularity of football makes them more resisting to change than other sports (“Never change a winning team”)

dominicjj 5y ago

As a chess variant fan, this is a cool idea that has a lot of potential. I would like to see it extended to include say, the first ten moves. Black may announce a double move any time during the first ten moves after which white gets his double move and then play continues with single alternating moves as usual, with the sole restriction that mate may not be delivered by a double move.

OscarCunningham 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thue%E2%80%93Morse_sequence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thue%E2%80%93Morse_sequence > In mathematics, the Thue–Morse sequence is the binary sequence obtained by starting with 0 and successively appending the Boolean complement of the sequence obtained thus far. The first few steps of this procedure yield the strings 0 then 01, 0110, 01101001, 0110100110010110, and so on, which are prefixes of the Thue–Morse sequence. The full sequence begins 01101001100101101001011001101001....

sobriquet9 5y ago
That's not what the paper proposes, though. And doing that would invalidate a lot of chess tactics that rely on alternating moves.
jameshart 5y ago
I was wondering whether they were going to follow that sequence - I know it as the ‘fair share’ sequence. It has a number of interesting fairness properties, but I don’t I don’t think I’ve ever seen it suggested for turntaking in a game like Chess.

fsiefken 5y ago

Another way of improving chess would be kasparov10 or a once per year chess960, chess480 starting position. https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-problem-with-chess960 https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-problem-with-chess960

YetAnotherNick 5y ago

> Other expert programs, including Leela Chess Zero and Stockfish, when pitted against each other in the superfinal of the unofficial world computer chess championship (TCEC), give White even greater odds of winning, but the outcome is still a draw in the large majority of games (see https://tcec-chess.com https://tcec-chess.com). Despite the fact that computer programs start play from 50 preselected opening positions in the TCEC superfinal (once as White and once as Black), it is remarkable that Black has not won a single game in the last two TCEC superfinals This line is very dubious. TCEC SuFi openings highly promotes one side over other as otherwise it was seen that almost all matches ends in a draw. It could very well select 1. g4 and black will win all matches. Also there had been an incident where Leela won an opening both with black and white pieces and it happened only once in TCEC history.

sobriquet9 5y ago

Why not let black choose color after first move of white?

seoaeu 5y ago
Seems like that would just result in a lookup table of the twenty moves for white and whether you should swap for them
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  It would probably just end up with only even starting moves being played as people would swap if you played a tricky starting move.

User23 5y ago

One of the most amusing Chess variants I learned as a kid is the one where white gets the full complement of pieces, and black gets only a king, with the proviso that black gets two consecutive moves and can move through check on the first move. This means that black can capture two pieces in a single turn. While white still wins with optimal play, less experienced players playing white will get absolutely wrecked.

JerryDot 5y ago

This paper is pretty awful. Two amateur chess players guessed the best sequences of WBBWW and then plugged the result of their guesses into an engine to statically analyse the position. There is absolutely no chance that they found the best options for either player. The sequencing argument that they make has no real foundation. Introducing double moves could have all kinds of side-effects which they later mention when showing their guesswork-variations but skip over when trying to make the previous "logical" argument. The only semi-useful sentence in this paper is the following: > More light would be shed on this question if the two leading machine-learning chess programs, AlphaZero and Leela Chess Zero, were taught to play with our proposed change in the order of the 3rd and 4th moves from White-Black to Black-White. The rest can be summarised as "We thought of this potential rule change and it seemed to us to be more even for black." If they had wanted to then there are only around 10,000,000 possible game-states after the first WBBWW and potentially looking at computer evaluations of the whole tree of possibilities could be semi-interesting and definitely very achievable. Probably better and easier to guess instead though to be fair.

ummonk 5y ago
> If they had wanted to then there are only around 10,000,000 possible game-states after the first WBBWW and potentially looking at computer evaluations of the whole tree of possibilities could be semi-interesting and definitely very achievable. Probably better and easier to guess instead though to be fair. This is what I was expecting them to do from seeing the abstract. Instead they just examined a handful of novel lines and evaluated them with Stockfish. An interesting proposed rules change, but a rather low quality analysis of it.
shmageggy 5y ago
Lichess has an API endpoint for their cached analysis, so they could have easily automated at least some of the new tree. Or they could have inserted a couple of `if` statements into Stockfish, recompiled, and simply analyzed the root position. Even calling this a "paper" is a stretch. I'm usually against twitter post threads as content but that seems about the level of analysis that's actually present here.
dmurray 5y ago

ogogmad 5y ago

What about a pie-slicing approach? White makes the first move, and black decides whether he wants to switch places.

unanswered 5y ago
I think a better way to state this would be: player A makes white's first move, then player B decides whether to play white or black. Play proceeds as normal with black to move. But tbh it seems a bit silly; at least TFA realizes there at least naively seems to be more at stake in moves 2 and ..2.

ydnaclementine 5y ago

For comparison, there's a lot of different ways to make chess games more even between differently skilled players through chess handicaps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_(chess)#Main https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_(chess)#Main Paul Morphy (one of the greats) commonly played mortals a rook or more down

zone411 5y ago

At high levels of play and in computer-vs-computer games, the problem is too many draws. This paper's idea would exacerbate this problem. If you want a fairer outcome, just do what's done already and count one match to be two games, one with white, one with black, and five possible outcomes. One interesting variant that I would love to see tried is no-black castling (or no-black-short-castling) chess. Draws would count as wins for black (called Armageddon scoring). You could still play two games (one per side) to get the most fair outcome. This starting position should still allow a large variety of openings and it would always be balanced on the edge without the large dead zone of draws. All chess programs can already play this variant as well, though maybe not most optimally. Chess960 is also a pretty good solution that reduces the value of memorizing openings.

beardyw 5y ago
Or maybe award less than half points for a draw?
- zone411 5y ago
  Some are worried that it might lead to collusion (https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-bilbao-draw-feedback-from-our-readers https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-bilbao-draw-feedback-from-...) but I like it.

Tomminn 5y ago

Fair chess is trivial. The first player chooses white's move. The second player chooses whether to play as black or to take over playing as white. Problem solved. The first player is incentivized to make white's first move as value neutral as possible. It's exactly the same principle as the "sister cut's the cake, brother chooses which piece to take" trick many will have used as kids.

sellyme 5y ago
It's also trivial to make chess fair by agreeing that every match ends in a draw. The concern is in how we can make it fair without making it less interesting. The cake-cutting solution would severely reduce opening variety.
- Tomminn 5y ago
  I fail to see how this would be the case. I think it may even increase opening variety. I think you'd see many more opening with oddly position a-c/f-g file pawns, or horses thrown into the rail. I think it could make for a radically different game opening game that would be just as diverse as the current game. Perhaps more so. I wonder if you misunderstood? Since this is very far from agreeing to a draw at the outset. I meant the cake cutting for only the very first move. Not the subsequent moves. Only the very first move played on the board is incentivized to be value neutral.
  - sellyme 5y ago
    > I wonder if you misunderstood? [...] I meant the cake cutting for only the very first move. No, I got that. > I fail to see how this would be the case. I think it may even increase opening variety. At a high level players will be relatively comfortable with playing at least one opening from any (sensible) opening move, so swapping would offer very little disadvantage in terms of not being prepared. So the decision on whether or not to swap is almost entirely based on how good that opening move is. Now, white has a significant advantage on just about every opening move that's currently played with any regularity. Therefore black will almost always swap, and gain that same advantage. So it's in white's interest to not play those moves, and instead pick whichever moves are as close to 50/50 as possible, so that their opponent cannot get an advantage. The crucial thing to note is that most possible moves white can make are either good (preserve a meaningful advantage for white) or bad (immediately gives advantage to black). There are not many first moves that result in a 50/50 game. Therefore the number of viable first moves is decreased. They're certainly different first moves, and we'd see a lot of variety for a year or two, maybe even up to a decade as people play and learn entirely new lines. But in the long run the number of opening moves that don't immediately give up an advantage would be reduced.

zeteo 5y ago

On the average game of chess white scores 0.55 points and black 0.45. In the age of computers it should be pretty trivial to award black 1.2 points for a win (or some such appropriate number) and vastly improve balance.