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Reimagining Chess with AlphaZero

155 points by joak 5y ago

hutrdvnj 5y ago
I think what this analysis really shows is that less time lead to less draws. Maybe we could rethink time controls. Classic could maybe be something like 1h+20sec increment for both sides. This would also make it more interesting to watch such an event live.
- qzw 5y ago
  Don’t rapid and blitz already kind of fill that role? I’m really not sure that having fewer draws is a great metric to guide optimization for classical chess. First, some games that end in draws are actually fantastic, back-and-forth battles that are as exciting as any win. Second, if there are fewer draws, each win becomes less special, especially for the major tournaments. For a cautionary tale, see baseball. They optimized the game for home runs, and now it’s a less interesting sport because it’s become much more one dimensional, and viewership is still trending down anyway. I feel like classical human chess is in a pretty good position right now, having survived the rise of the machines. Chess YouTubers like Gotham and agadmator (and many others) have sizable followings. And I would argue that the biggest popularity boost chess has gotten recently has been the Queen’s Gambit. So maybe leave the rules alone and make more chess TV shows and movies.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    I agree that draws and the possibility of draws increases excitement. But I do think top-level chess results in a draw a bit too often: half or more of games in high-level tournaments, and vast majority of world championship games. Rules that draw 10-20% less often, and remove a little bit of white's advantage, would be nice.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  The perennially controversial opinion is that rapid chess (the time control) should replace classical chess. But I don't play chess tournaments so it's not my place to decide.
joak 5y ago
Excerpt: Modern chess is the culmination of centuries of experience, as well as an evolutionary sequence of rule adjustments from its inception in the 6th century to the modern rules we know today. While classical chess still captivates the minds of millions of players worldwide, the game is anything but static. Many variants have been proposed and played over the years by enthusiasts and theorists. They continue the evolutionary cycle by altering the board, piece placement, or the rules—offering players "something subtle, sparkling, or amusing which cannot be done in ordinary chess
pests 5y ago
Great read. Interesting variations to the rules. Here's an annotated quote: "The nine changes considered in this study are listed in Table 1. No-castling and No-castling (10) involve a full and partial [not allowed during first 10 turns / 20 plies] restriction on the castling rule. Pawn-one-square, Semi-torpedo [can move 2 squares on 2ed and 3rd ranks], Torpedo [can move 2 squares], Pawn-back [up to your 2ed rank, don't count against 50 limit], and Pawn-sideways involve changes to pawn mobility. Self-capture chess allows players to also capture their own pieces. Finally, Stalemate=win recasts stalemate as a win for the attacking side, rather than a draw." Do any chess games support these modes or is these possible to play today?
- riwsky 5y ago
  Software rendering of these rules might lag a bit—but if you have dedicated hardware, it should be possible to make this work.
  - afro88 5y ago
    This is such an intriguing comment. What question are you answering?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - chillee 5y ago
      I think it's just a subtle way of saying "Implementing these rules in software might take a while, but you can use a physical chess board to try these variants"
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    Help me understand... Why would I need dedicated hardware to render chess moves that are slightly different to regular chess moves...? Your comment makes no sense...
    - 5y ago
AmericanChopper 5y ago
The self-play stats show how massively imba all those suggestions are, so I doubt there’s much value in any of them. I don’t think any of them address the main complaints about chess either, which as far as I can tell are: 1) It’s too drawish 2) It requires too much memorization to learn Fischer Random or similar variants solve both of those problems very well. But they sacrifice one of the things that a lot of people actually love about chess, which is that chess as a body of knowledge is continually growing forever. You can learn something about chess today by reading Morphy’s games from the 19th century, and any time you play or watch a game today you’re most likely going to see a brand new game of chess, that nobody’s ever seen before (and if it’s a top level game it could be a very interesting brand new game of chess). I personally doubt tinkering with mechanics has any improvements to offer chess, and I don’t think most people actually want the most frequently complained about “problems” with the game to actually be fixed.
- mlyle 5y ago
  > The self-play stats show how massively imba all those suggestions are, Classical, white wins 18/1000 and black wins 3/1000 with 1 minute per move. Semi-torpedo, this is 27 & 6/1000, so it's both less imbalanced and less drawish than classical chess with very high level play. (White's 6x advantage is reduced to 4.5x). It also has a slightly richer set of interesting moves per position on average. A bit more imbalance in other variants isn't a catastrophic problem, either, IMO, with tournaments consisting of multiple games and equal numbers of games as white and black. Your other point-- yes, any benefits of tinkering with the rules needs to be balanced against what it does to the traditions and continuity of the history of the game.
deepzn 5y ago
A nice companion piece here, showing how AlphaZero learns compared to human Chess history - https://en.chessbase.com/post/acquisition-of-chess-knowledge-in-alphazero https://en.chessbase.com/post/acquisition-of-chess-knowledge...
FrozenVoid 5y ago
These changes don't change complexity of the game much, while chess can be altered to have much higher branching factor and move complexity. Check: https://github.com/FrozenVoid/Game-Design-DB/blob/main/BoardGames/Chess-like/FrozenChess%20series/FrozenChess13.txt https://github.com/FrozenVoid/Game-Design-DB/blob/main/Board...
- alar44 5y ago
  That's not chess, that is a completely different game. The only similarity is that they are both board games.
  - FrozenVoid 5y ago
    This (v13) variant was arrived from altering normal chess step-by-step, evolving from this(v1->v13) variant https://github.com/FrozenVoid/Game-Design-DB/blob/main/BoardGames/Chess-like/FrozenChess%20series/FrozenChess1.txt https://github.com/FrozenVoid/Game-Design-DB/blob/main/Board... which is fairly mundane variant with extra pieces and slightly larger board. It would be interesting to know at which point FrozenChess variants become not-chess(or where chess variants become board games).
    - Zababa 5y ago
      > New Egg Fusion ability: fused eggs(any allied egg can be fused to another on the board) grow as N eggs would grow in single turn(similar to quickening:60 turns become 20 with 3x egg) and produce 1 dragon. That doesn't look mundane to me.
- ycombinete 5y ago
  Is this playable anywhere? Search engines only show me Frozen themed chess sets, and people playing regular chess in cold weather.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Ah, chess is fine as it is. It's just we meek humans are no longer the ones who play it best.
- joelthelion 5y ago
  There is one problem: there are too many draws at top human level.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    I'm in top 1% of rapid chess players on lichess, and I hardly ever see a draw. If top 100 or 500 players on the whole planet have this problem, well, they can try some other game, probably, I don't mind.
    - joelthelion 5y ago
      The problem is not for these 100 players specifically. It's for all the fans watching them.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        They can watch blitz of bullet games, it is by far more entertaining.
        kzrdude 5y ago
        Rapid is better (for the audience). Slow enough to be able to catch more of the game going on, while a lot of decisive results happen.
    - kzrdude 5y ago
      You can't reach top 1% without being very good at taking advantage of time pressure, though, or am I wrong? The term rapid chess includes many time controls - both with and without increment, so I'm not sure how to understand you.
gazookgaboot 5y ago
There is only one way to fix chess and it's called Shogi (A chess style game played in Japan). Shogi is similar to the bughouse chess variant in that captured pieces return to the board on the opponent's side. This prevents draw by insufficient material which is the real bane of Grandmaster level chess. Of course this isn't exactly chess anymore but like any design decision there are no perfect solutions.
- monsieurbanana 5y ago
  There is only one way to fix chess and it's called Go. Of course, this isn't exactly chess anymore but like any design decision there are no perf- Wait a minute, Go is perfect. If we forget about ko rules.
  - antris 5y ago
    What's wrong with ko rules? I think it's a simple rule and ko fights are an interesting part of go.
    - platz 5y ago
      excepting some crazy multi step ko that is possible in theory, it never happens in practice. There is nothing wrong with ko, it adds depth to the game. maybe they dont like ko becauase they have a weakness in their play and cant take advantage of them or defend against them. if you give your opponent a lot of ko threats they will end up winning most kos.
    - tromp 5y ago
      Some ko rules only address a subset of repeating positions, and still allow for infinitely long games (sometimes ruling those as a no-result requiring the game to be played over). The so-called superko rule simply states that no previous position can be repeated, which seems preferable.
  - mwattsun 5y ago
    I was really impressed by "AlphaGo - The Movie", despite not knowing much about Go, because the way they told the story, people from the Asian countries were so sure their champion would win a Go tournament against a computer, that were stunned into a new consciousness about artificial intelligence when the computer won. This started an arms race in AI is what I gather. Edit: Full movie for free on YouTube: AlphaGo - The Movie | Full award-winning documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y
beardyw 5y ago
It would be interesting to see if there is anything which would let black start on equal terms.
- travelhead 5y ago
  Yes! White moves first, then black makes two moves in a row, followed by regular back and forth moves after. This would theoretically allow black to start on equal terms.
  - ranguna 5y ago
    What about playing two games at the same time? One you play as black and the other white.
    - yesenadam 5y ago
      This has been tried: "Basque chess - A chess competition in which the players simultaneously play each other two games on two boards, each playing White on one and Black on the other. There is a clock at both boards. It removes the bonus in mini-matches of playing White first. Basque chess was first played in the 2012 Donostia Chess Festival in the Basque Country, Spain. Also called Basque System." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_chess This story on the event says it was originally Bronstein's idea. https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2012/01/23/chess-notes/0GSYU7t1dT3qByTdraJbVN/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2012/01/23/chess-notes/0GSY...
      - ranguna 5y ago
        And did it work? Was the game fair for both players?
- lmm 5y ago
  Hmm? Chess is already very drawish at the top level, a specific goal that they highlight in this paper is to unbalance the game.
thom 5y ago
I feel compelled to say that, Coronavirus shenanigans aside, Wijk an Zee has just finished and was a fantastic event with many interesting and decisive games. Classical chess does not need fixing, even at the highest level. It’s fun that we can run these experiments though. I’d love to test out some of the variants a friend and I came up with! One of my favourites was starting with all the pieces off the board and a move was either to put a piece on your own half of the board (king had to come first) or move an existing piece. Another was having a mark on the bottom of one pawn on either side, and as a move you could look to see if a pawn was the “assassin” and if so, immediately move it. This of course meant that in some circumstances you could win on the first turn by capturing the king.
- greyman 5y ago
  Yes Tata Steel tournament was great, I just don't think we need variants like Fischer random chess. There is still lot to explore in classical chess. Anyway, how is the first variant you described called? (one starting with empty board). My favourite is crazychess, lot of tactical fun there.
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    Do you mean crazyhouse maybe? Which is a single player (per side) variant of bughouse.
  - thom 5y ago
    We didn’t really give them names, these were things we came up with ourselves (perhaps not original ideas though!) I suspect the first would be ruined quite quickly by computer analysis or really any calculation at all but we had fun. :)
  - gameswithgo 5y ago
    “One needs do nothing except die” -Peter Sagan However exploring chess variants is fun. Gary Kasparov very much enjoyed his random chess tournament as did spectators. What is good can be made better.
- bgroat 5y ago
mellosouls 5y ago
This initiative previously discussed here: 2019: Kramnik and AlphaZero: How to Rethink Chess https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21789224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21789224 2020: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24431381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24431381
eterevsky 5y ago
I was hoping that it would help find the changes in rules that would at the same time 1) result in more even game between white and black and 2) result in fewer draws. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell all the alterations of rules that they explored turned out worse than classical chess on at least one of those criteria.
- qzw 5y ago
  Are those goals not somewhat contradictory? How would a more even game not lead to more draws instead of fewer? Unless the new rules punish slight mistakes much more severely, perhaps? But that would lead to other issues in the balance and feel of the game.
  - ajuc 5y ago
    You can for example declare than on draw black wins and give white some small material advantage.
- qsort 5y ago
  I'm particularly surprised that the stalemate = win rule doesn't result in more decisive games. Intuitively, it would seem that an entire class of endgames that are classically draws would become winning for the stronger side. Perhaps computers are so strong they can "see through" the rule change?
  - matharmin 5y ago
    From the posted stats, the Stalemate=win rule does result in more decisive games (fewer draws). But it has an even bigger effect in giving white a further advantage over black.
    - j4yav 5y ago
      What about white draws with stalemate and black wins?
terramex 5y ago
I'm surprised that so many comments talk about "too many draws in classical chess problem" as just yesterday we just finished Tata Steel that was a terrific tournament with plenty of decisive games (84 out of 182) and even most of the draws were thrilling games. During commentary, GM Naroditsky mentioned that he asked past World Champions Anand and Topalov about influence of Magnus Carlsen on the game and both responded with "people have stoped offering draws in many different types of positions where 10-15 year ago they would shake hands and go home" [1]. Additionally modern computer analyses show that even dead drawn positions can be won if opponent makes slightest inaccuracy and players do try to capitalise on that often. Maybe World Championship matches format needs some tweaking. Draws are much more common there as losing one game can easily mean losing whole match and players are extra cautious. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK2IWnOfFuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK2IWnOfFuY
- cmsefton 5y ago
  Too many draws is not a new criticism. Capablanca believed in the risk of "draw death", in that the majority of grandmaster games would eventually end in draws. He proposed a change to chess boards introducing two new pieces, the archbishop and the chancellor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capablanca_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capablanca_chess He wasn't the first to propose these sorts of changes (see the Wikipedia article). In 1925, his comments on why he proposed these things is as follows: "I spoke with Dr Tartakower, a great master and also a friend of mine, and he published, in very condensed form, my ideas on certain reforms that I believed it would be appropriate to make in chess. I told him that previously in various newspapers and magazines things had been attributed to me which I had never said, and this seemed to me a good opportunity to clarify the facts and to expound the only modifications that I really considered appropriate, while at the same time clarifying that it was untrue that I had ever declared that chess had reached its limit and that to draw was easy. It is of course easy to understand how much has been written and said on this matter. In reality, what I have heard and read on it demonstrates that I have not been understood." "...In reality, today there exists, as it were, a separate form of chess, which is understood only by the most select of the great masters, and which very often relies on a highly-developed technique which already today threatens to make talent equal to genius; that would make chess rather similar to what the game of draughts is today. Thus despite the old history of chess and the thousands of books written on chess played on a 64-square board, it is necessary to avoid what would undoubtedly be a disaster. In order to prevent, for a few centuries at least, technique from again becoming such a dominant factor, I have suggested increasing the field of operations." https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/2xxl2p/what_do_you_think_about_the_drawn_death_of_chess/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/2xxl2p/what_do_you_t...
ogogmad 5y ago
What about "Progressive chess"? White makes 1 move; black makes 2; white makes 3; etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mkohlmyr 5y ago
  That's a funny idea, but I can't imagine you get past the point of having 4-5 sequential moves without finding a forced mate?
- VHRanger 5y ago
  The game is most likely degenerate? It's hard to avoid a game losing position if opponent is making 5+ moves in a row next turn
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Interestingly I think that would be a trivially solvable game with traditional methods (like checkers, connect 4, or tic-tac-toe were) due to the seemingly overwhelming likelyhood the game could always be forced to end in 5ish ply or less. Could be a fun weekend programming challenge to prove it!
jcims 5y ago
I wonder if there’s any way for AlphaZero to estimate how interesting/fun a variant is.
- drewm1980 5y ago
  Indeed. Depth and balance are part of a fun astract, and those are objective enough to be analyzed this way.
  - jcims 5y ago
    Would be interesting to build a GAN that can optimize for those and then just open the game up for humans to try to figure out. I bet it could come up with some interesting card games as well.
Tenoke 5y ago
If you want say less draws or no advantage for White or less memorization, the easiest solution to me seems to be to just have engines evaluate a few trillion random positions and then filter out those with 0 advantage and low chance of draws in explored lines and then use those as the starting positions.
- __s 5y ago
  As done in Checkers: http://www.quadibloc.com/other/bo010201.htm http://www.quadibloc.com/other/bo010201.htm & how TCEC (Top Chess Engine Championship) runs
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
I think the best thing that can be done for human vs human chess is to reduce the number of draws. I think this can be done with a very simple rule change: In a draw, instead of a both players receiving half a point, one player will randomly receive a full point. The expected value of a draw is still the same (0.5 points per draw) but I think it does change the psychology of it.
- alasdair_ 5y ago
  That would make most major tournaments almost completely luck based. It would be interesting to see what happens if draws were only worth a third of a point. Presumably that would encourage one of the players to risk more trying to win.
robrenaud 5y ago
Is anyone interested in doing this kind of analysis for games that are in development? I am a SWE with 16 years of experience at Google with lots of practical/applied ML. I am about to be funemployed, and I'd love to incorporate an AI player/analysis into the playtest feedback loop of a board/card game in development. I've won the Race for the Galaxy tournament 4 times in 7 attempts at the World Boardgaming Championship (average size of field around 80?) and placed in the Dominion tournament a few times. I created rftgstats and councilroom.com (Dominion), which did analysis/modelling on game logs, but didn't have AI players.
- melonmouse 5y ago
  Another funemployed xoogler here! I've been making games for the last year, and one thing I would definitely love to explore is designing a deep but easy to learn game using learning techniques. We should talk! You can reach me on: melonmousegames@gmail.com
- sorenn111 5y ago
  Start-up/Consulting idea: use ML/RL strategies and tools and help gaming companies improve their AI. In a variety of games, the AI should be a big component of gameplay (all single player games) and ends up being such a liability. I can imagine the litany of issues that prevent this, but I wonder if a company could accumulate some general templates/models/toolkits that could help AI improve for a variety of gaming companies. Most AI in games are more like Stockfish than AlphaZero and the cost to train these models for each of these games is probably prohibitively high. However, I imagine a variety of gaming companies that provide a 1st person game would not mind outsourcing their NPC AI and perhaps a company could find some synergy across games such that the marginal cost of going from game to game could be decreased. An example game that fits your board game template more or less are turn based games like Civilization. I love Civ games but the AI stupidity is the weakest part of the game. I know RTS games like starcraft are super hard (probably why Deepmind chose to do it) but perhaps turn based games or games with a slower pace and limited action space are doable for a consulting company. Idk, food for thought, but if you make a billion dollar company I'm saving this post for my records :P
omoikane 5y ago
A very different variation is to keep all the same rules, but remove the turn-based nature of chess and allow pieces to be moved simultaneously. One implementation is here: https://kungfuchess.org/ https://kungfuchess.org/ Their twitter account has some videos on what the games look like, for example: https://twitter.com/KungFuChessOrg/status/1429295542757060616 https://twitter.com/KungFuChessOrg/status/142929554275706061...
arturo40 5y ago
Is there a plan to add the best chess variants to the open source alpha zero clone leela chess zero (lczero.org)? I'd love to play capture anything/no castling variant with lc0!
suyjuris 5y ago
If you find chess variants interesting, I would recommend looking at Go [1] as well. It is similar to chess in that it is an ancient turn-based strategy game for two players and with perfect information, but I find it much more pleasing from a game-design perspective. The rules are much simpler, there are no draws, and the starting player does not have an advantage. Also, you can have handicaps so that two players with different playing strengths play a evenly-matched game. To me, this shows that it is possible to solve most of the commonly cited issues in chess by changing it into a radically different game. But can you do it with only a minute adjustment? I find it difficult to imagine chess without draws, but it is not inconceivable. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game) [2] E.g.: if the game would end in a draw, instead the player who has made more King-moves wins. If that is tied as well, Black wins.

155 points by joak 5y ago

I think what this analysis really shows is that less time lead to less draws. Maybe we could rethink time controls. Classic could maybe be something like 1h+20sec increment for both sides. This would also make it more interesting to watch such an event live.

qzw 5y ago
Don’t rapid and blitz already kind of fill that role? I’m really not sure that having fewer draws is a great metric to guide optimization for classical chess. First, some games that end in draws are actually fantastic, back-and-forth battles that are as exciting as any win. Second, if there are fewer draws, each win becomes less special, especially for the major tournaments. For a cautionary tale, see baseball. They optimized the game for home runs, and now it’s a less interesting sport because it’s become much more one dimensional, and viewership is still trending down anyway. I feel like classical human chess is in a pretty good position right now, having survived the rise of the machines. Chess YouTubers like Gotham and agadmator (and many others) have sizable followings. And I would argue that the biggest popularity boost chess has gotten recently has been the Queen’s Gambit. So maybe leave the rules alone and make more chess TV shows and movies.
- mlyle 5y ago
  I agree that draws and the possibility of draws increases excitement. But I do think top-level chess results in a draw a bit too often: half or more of games in high-level tournaments, and vast majority of world championship games. Rules that draw 10-20% less often, and remove a little bit of white's advantage, would be nice.
kzrdude 5y ago
The perennially controversial opinion is that rapid chess (the time control) should replace classical chess. But I don't play chess tournaments so it's not my place to decide.

joak 5y ago

Excerpt: Modern chess is the culmination of centuries of experience, as well as an evolutionary sequence of rule adjustments from its inception in the 6th century to the modern rules we know today. While classical chess still captivates the minds of millions of players worldwide, the game is anything but static. Many variants have been proposed and played over the years by enthusiasts and theorists. They continue the evolutionary cycle by altering the board, piece placement, or the rules—offering players "something subtle, sparkling, or amusing which cannot be done in ordinary chess

pests 5y ago

Great read. Interesting variations to the rules. Here's an annotated quote: "The nine changes considered in this study are listed in Table 1. No-castling and No-castling (10) involve a full and partial [not allowed during first 10 turns / 20 plies] restriction on the castling rule. Pawn-one-square, Semi-torpedo [can move 2 squares on 2ed and 3rd ranks], Torpedo [can move 2 squares], Pawn-back [up to your 2ed rank, don't count against 50 limit], and Pawn-sideways involve changes to pawn mobility. Self-capture chess allows players to also capture their own pieces. Finally, Stalemate=win recasts stalemate as a win for the attacking side, rather than a draw." Do any chess games support these modes or is these possible to play today?

riwsky 5y ago
Software rendering of these rules might lag a bit—but if you have dedicated hardware, it should be possible to make this work.
- afro88 5y ago
  This is such an intriguing comment. What question are you answering?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - chillee 5y ago
    I think it's just a subtle way of saying "Implementing these rules in software might take a while, but you can use a physical chess board to try these variants"
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Help me understand... Why would I need dedicated hardware to render chess moves that are slightly different to regular chess moves...? Your comment makes no sense...
  - 5y ago

AmericanChopper 5y ago

The self-play stats show how massively imba all those suggestions are, so I doubt there’s much value in any of them. I don’t think any of them address the main complaints about chess either, which as far as I can tell are: 1) It’s too drawish 2) It requires too much memorization to learn Fischer Random or similar variants solve both of those problems very well. But they sacrifice one of the things that a lot of people actually love about chess, which is that chess as a body of knowledge is continually growing forever. You can learn something about chess today by reading Morphy’s games from the 19th century, and any time you play or watch a game today you’re most likely going to see a brand new game of chess, that nobody’s ever seen before (and if it’s a top level game it could be a very interesting brand new game of chess). I personally doubt tinkering with mechanics has any improvements to offer chess, and I don’t think most people actually want the most frequently complained about “problems” with the game to actually be fixed.

mlyle 5y ago
> The self-play stats show how massively imba all those suggestions are, Classical, white wins 18/1000 and black wins 3/1000 with 1 minute per move. Semi-torpedo, this is 27 & 6/1000, so it's both less imbalanced and less drawish than classical chess with very high level play. (White's 6x advantage is reduced to 4.5x). It also has a slightly richer set of interesting moves per position on average. A bit more imbalance in other variants isn't a catastrophic problem, either, IMO, with tournaments consisting of multiple games and equal numbers of games as white and black. Your other point-- yes, any benefits of tinkering with the rules needs to be balanced against what it does to the traditions and continuity of the history of the game.

deepzn 5y ago

A nice companion piece here, showing how AlphaZero learns compared to human Chess history - https://en.chessbase.com/post/acquisition-of-chess-knowledge-in-alphazero https://en.chessbase.com/post/acquisition-of-chess-knowledge...

FrozenVoid 5y ago

These changes don't change complexity of the game much, while chess can be altered to have much higher branching factor and move complexity. Check: https://github.com/FrozenVoid/Game-Design-DB/blob/main/BoardGames/Chess-like/FrozenChess%20series/FrozenChess13.txt https://github.com/FrozenVoid/Game-Design-DB/blob/main/Board...

alar44 5y ago
That's not chess, that is a completely different game. The only similarity is that they are both board games.
- FrozenVoid 5y ago
  This (v13) variant was arrived from altering normal chess step-by-step, evolving from this(v1->v13) variant https://github.com/FrozenVoid/Game-Design-DB/blob/main/BoardGames/Chess-like/FrozenChess%20series/FrozenChess1.txt https://github.com/FrozenVoid/Game-Design-DB/blob/main/Board... which is fairly mundane variant with extra pieces and slightly larger board. It would be interesting to know at which point FrozenChess variants become not-chess(or where chess variants become board games).
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > New Egg Fusion ability: fused eggs(any allied egg can be fused to another on the board) grow as N eggs would grow in single turn(similar to quickening:60 turns become 20 with 3x egg) and produce 1 dragon. That doesn't look mundane to me.
ycombinete 5y ago
Is this playable anywhere? Search engines only show me Frozen themed chess sets, and people playing regular chess in cold weather.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

Ah, chess is fine as it is. It's just we meek humans are no longer the ones who play it best.

joelthelion 5y ago
There is one problem: there are too many draws at top human level.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  I'm in top 1% of rapid chess players on lichess, and I hardly ever see a draw. If top 100 or 500 players on the whole planet have this problem, well, they can try some other game, probably, I don't mind.
  - joelthelion 5y ago
    The problem is not for these 100 players specifically. It's for all the fans watching them.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      They can watch blitz of bullet games, it is by far more entertaining.
      - kzrdude 5y ago
        Rapid is better (for the audience). Slow enough to be able to catch more of the game going on, while a lot of decisive results happen.
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    You can't reach top 1% without being very good at taking advantage of time pressure, though, or am I wrong? The term rapid chess includes many time controls - both with and without increment, so I'm not sure how to understand you.

gazookgaboot 5y ago

There is only one way to fix chess and it's called Shogi (A chess style game played in Japan). Shogi is similar to the bughouse chess variant in that captured pieces return to the board on the opponent's side. This prevents draw by insufficient material which is the real bane of Grandmaster level chess. Of course this isn't exactly chess anymore but like any design decision there are no perfect solutions.

monsieurbanana 5y ago
There is only one way to fix chess and it's called Go. Of course, this isn't exactly chess anymore but like any design decision there are no perf- Wait a minute, Go is perfect. If we forget about ko rules.
- antris 5y ago
  What's wrong with ko rules? I think it's a simple rule and ko fights are an interesting part of go.
  - platz 5y ago
    excepting some crazy multi step ko that is possible in theory, it never happens in practice. There is nothing wrong with ko, it adds depth to the game. maybe they dont like ko becauase they have a weakness in their play and cant take advantage of them or defend against them. if you give your opponent a lot of ko threats they will end up winning most kos.
  - tromp 5y ago
    Some ko rules only address a subset of repeating positions, and still allow for infinitely long games (sometimes ruling those as a no-result requiring the game to be played over). The so-called superko rule simply states that no previous position can be repeated, which seems preferable.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  I was really impressed by "AlphaGo - The Movie", despite not knowing much about Go, because the way they told the story, people from the Asian countries were so sure their champion would win a Go tournament against a computer, that were stunned into a new consciousness about artificial intelligence when the computer won. This started an arms race in AI is what I gather. Edit: Full movie for free on YouTube: AlphaGo - The Movie | Full award-winning documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y

beardyw 5y ago

It would be interesting to see if there is anything which would let black start on equal terms.

travelhead 5y ago
Yes! White moves first, then black makes two moves in a row, followed by regular back and forth moves after. This would theoretically allow black to start on equal terms.
- ranguna 5y ago
  What about playing two games at the same time? One you play as black and the other white.
  - yesenadam 5y ago
    This has been tried: "Basque chess - A chess competition in which the players simultaneously play each other two games on two boards, each playing White on one and Black on the other. There is a clock at both boards. It removes the bonus in mini-matches of playing White first. Basque chess was first played in the 2012 Donostia Chess Festival in the Basque Country, Spain. Also called Basque System." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_chess This story on the event says it was originally Bronstein's idea. https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2012/01/23/chess-notes/0GSYU7t1dT3qByTdraJbVN/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2012/01/23/chess-notes/0GSY...
    - ranguna 5y ago
      And did it work? Was the game fair for both players?
lmm 5y ago
Hmm? Chess is already very drawish at the top level, a specific goal that they highlight in this paper is to unbalance the game.

thom 5y ago

I feel compelled to say that, Coronavirus shenanigans aside, Wijk an Zee has just finished and was a fantastic event with many interesting and decisive games. Classical chess does not need fixing, even at the highest level. It’s fun that we can run these experiments though. I’d love to test out some of the variants a friend and I came up with! One of my favourites was starting with all the pieces off the board and a move was either to put a piece on your own half of the board (king had to come first) or move an existing piece. Another was having a mark on the bottom of one pawn on either side, and as a move you could look to see if a pawn was the “assassin” and if so, immediately move it. This of course meant that in some circumstances you could win on the first turn by capturing the king.

greyman 5y ago
Yes Tata Steel tournament was great, I just don't think we need variants like Fischer random chess. There is still lot to explore in classical chess. Anyway, how is the first variant you described called? (one starting with empty board). My favourite is crazychess, lot of tactical fun there.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  Do you mean crazyhouse maybe? Which is a single player (per side) variant of bughouse.
- thom 5y ago
  We didn’t really give them names, these were things we came up with ourselves (perhaps not original ideas though!) I suspect the first would be ruined quite quickly by computer analysis or really any calculation at all but we had fun. :)
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  “One needs do nothing except die” -Peter Sagan However exploring chess variants is fun. Gary Kasparov very much enjoyed his random chess tournament as did spectators. What is good can be made better.
bgroat 5y ago

mellosouls 5y ago

This initiative previously discussed here: 2019: Kramnik and AlphaZero: How to Rethink Chess https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21789224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21789224 2020: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24431381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24431381

eterevsky 5y ago

I was hoping that it would help find the changes in rules that would at the same time 1) result in more even game between white and black and 2) result in fewer draws. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell all the alterations of rules that they explored turned out worse than classical chess on at least one of those criteria.

qzw 5y ago
Are those goals not somewhat contradictory? How would a more even game not lead to more draws instead of fewer? Unless the new rules punish slight mistakes much more severely, perhaps? But that would lead to other issues in the balance and feel of the game.
- ajuc 5y ago
  You can for example declare than on draw black wins and give white some small material advantage.
qsort 5y ago
I'm particularly surprised that the stalemate = win rule doesn't result in more decisive games. Intuitively, it would seem that an entire class of endgames that are classically draws would become winning for the stronger side. Perhaps computers are so strong they can "see through" the rule change?
- matharmin 5y ago
  From the posted stats, the Stalemate=win rule does result in more decisive games (fewer draws). But it has an even bigger effect in giving white a further advantage over black.
  - j4yav 5y ago
    What about white draws with stalemate and black wins?

terramex 5y ago

I'm surprised that so many comments talk about "too many draws in classical chess problem" as just yesterday we just finished Tata Steel that was a terrific tournament with plenty of decisive games (84 out of 182) and even most of the draws were thrilling games. During commentary, GM Naroditsky mentioned that he asked past World Champions Anand and Topalov about influence of Magnus Carlsen on the game and both responded with "people have stoped offering draws in many different types of positions where 10-15 year ago they would shake hands and go home" [1]. Additionally modern computer analyses show that even dead drawn positions can be won if opponent makes slightest inaccuracy and players do try to capitalise on that often. Maybe World Championship matches format needs some tweaking. Draws are much more common there as losing one game can easily mean losing whole match and players are extra cautious. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK2IWnOfFuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK2IWnOfFuY

cmsefton 5y ago
Too many draws is not a new criticism. Capablanca believed in the risk of "draw death", in that the majority of grandmaster games would eventually end in draws. He proposed a change to chess boards introducing two new pieces, the archbishop and the chancellor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capablanca_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capablanca_chess He wasn't the first to propose these sorts of changes (see the Wikipedia article). In 1925, his comments on why he proposed these things is as follows: "I spoke with Dr Tartakower, a great master and also a friend of mine, and he published, in very condensed form, my ideas on certain reforms that I believed it would be appropriate to make in chess. I told him that previously in various newspapers and magazines things had been attributed to me which I had never said, and this seemed to me a good opportunity to clarify the facts and to expound the only modifications that I really considered appropriate, while at the same time clarifying that it was untrue that I had ever declared that chess had reached its limit and that to draw was easy. It is of course easy to understand how much has been written and said on this matter. In reality, what I have heard and read on it demonstrates that I have not been understood." "...In reality, today there exists, as it were, a separate form of chess, which is understood only by the most select of the great masters, and which very often relies on a highly-developed technique which already today threatens to make talent equal to genius; that would make chess rather similar to what the game of draughts is today. Thus despite the old history of chess and the thousands of books written on chess played on a 64-square board, it is necessary to avoid what would undoubtedly be a disaster. In order to prevent, for a few centuries at least, technique from again becoming such a dominant factor, I have suggested increasing the field of operations." https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/2xxl2p/what_do_you_think_about_the_drawn_death_of_chess/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/2xxl2p/what_do_you_t...

ogogmad 5y ago

What about "Progressive chess"? White makes 1 move; black makes 2; white makes 3; etc.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mkohlmyr 5y ago
That's a funny idea, but I can't imagine you get past the point of having 4-5 sequential moves without finding a forced mate?
VHRanger 5y ago
The game is most likely degenerate? It's hard to avoid a game losing position if opponent is making 5+ moves in a row next turn
zamadatix 5y ago
Interestingly I think that would be a trivially solvable game with traditional methods (like checkers, connect 4, or tic-tac-toe were) due to the seemingly overwhelming likelyhood the game could always be forced to end in 5ish ply or less. Could be a fun weekend programming challenge to prove it!

jcims 5y ago

I wonder if there’s any way for AlphaZero to estimate how interesting/fun a variant is.

drewm1980 5y ago
Indeed. Depth and balance are part of a fun astract, and those are objective enough to be analyzed this way.
- jcims 5y ago
  Would be interesting to build a GAN that can optimize for those and then just open the game up for humans to try to figure out. I bet it could come up with some interesting card games as well.

Tenoke 5y ago

If you want say less draws or no advantage for White or less memorization, the easiest solution to me seems to be to just have engines evaluate a few trillion random positions and then filter out those with 0 advantage and low chance of draws in explored lines and then use those as the starting positions.

__s 5y ago
As done in Checkers: http://www.quadibloc.com/other/bo010201.htm http://www.quadibloc.com/other/bo010201.htm & how TCEC (Top Chess Engine Championship) runs

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

I think the best thing that can be done for human vs human chess is to reduce the number of draws. I think this can be done with a very simple rule change: In a draw, instead of a both players receiving half a point, one player will randomly receive a full point. The expected value of a draw is still the same (0.5 points per draw) but I think it does change the psychology of it.

alasdair_ 5y ago
That would make most major tournaments almost completely luck based. It would be interesting to see what happens if draws were only worth a third of a point. Presumably that would encourage one of the players to risk more trying to win.

robrenaud 5y ago

Is anyone interested in doing this kind of analysis for games that are in development? I am a SWE with 16 years of experience at Google with lots of practical/applied ML. I am about to be funemployed, and I'd love to incorporate an AI player/analysis into the playtest feedback loop of a board/card game in development. I've won the Race for the Galaxy tournament 4 times in 7 attempts at the World Boardgaming Championship (average size of field around 80?) and placed in the Dominion tournament a few times. I created rftgstats and councilroom.com (Dominion), which did analysis/modelling on game logs, but didn't have AI players.

melonmouse 5y ago
Another funemployed xoogler here! I've been making games for the last year, and one thing I would definitely love to explore is designing a deep but easy to learn game using learning techniques. We should talk! You can reach me on: melonmousegames@gmail.com
sorenn111 5y ago
Start-up/Consulting idea: use ML/RL strategies and tools and help gaming companies improve their AI. In a variety of games, the AI should be a big component of gameplay (all single player games) and ends up being such a liability. I can imagine the litany of issues that prevent this, but I wonder if a company could accumulate some general templates/models/toolkits that could help AI improve for a variety of gaming companies. Most AI in games are more like Stockfish than AlphaZero and the cost to train these models for each of these games is probably prohibitively high. However, I imagine a variety of gaming companies that provide a 1st person game would not mind outsourcing their NPC AI and perhaps a company could find some synergy across games such that the marginal cost of going from game to game could be decreased. An example game that fits your board game template more or less are turn based games like Civilization. I love Civ games but the AI stupidity is the weakest part of the game. I know RTS games like starcraft are super hard (probably why Deepmind chose to do it) but perhaps turn based games or games with a slower pace and limited action space are doable for a consulting company. Idk, food for thought, but if you make a billion dollar company I'm saving this post for my records :P

omoikane 5y ago

A very different variation is to keep all the same rules, but remove the turn-based nature of chess and allow pieces to be moved simultaneously. One implementation is here: https://kungfuchess.org/ https://kungfuchess.org/ Their twitter account has some videos on what the games look like, for example: https://twitter.com/KungFuChessOrg/status/1429295542757060616 https://twitter.com/KungFuChessOrg/status/142929554275706061...

arturo40 5y ago

Is there a plan to add the best chess variants to the open source alpha zero clone leela chess zero (lczero.org)? I'd love to play capture anything/no castling variant with lc0!

suyjuris 5y ago

If you find chess variants interesting, I would recommend looking at Go [1] as well. It is similar to chess in that it is an ancient turn-based strategy game for two players and with perfect information, but I find it much more pleasing from a game-design perspective. The rules are much simpler, there are no draws, and the starting player does not have an advantage. Also, you can have handicaps so that two players with different playing strengths play a evenly-matched game. To me, this shows that it is possible to solve most of the commonly cited issues in chess by changing it into a radically different game. But can you do it with only a minute adjustment? I find it difficult to imagine chess without draws, but it is not inconceivable. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game) [2] E.g.: if the game would end in a draw, instead the player who has made more King-moves wins. If that is tied as well, Black wins.