4 ms·

it's absolutely doable, especially for someone with the commitment of a chess grandmaster, but the main here issue wouldn't be having the processing power to ca

it's absolutely doable, especially for someone with the commitment of a chess grandmaster, but the main here issue wouldn't be having the processing power to calculate the moves, it'd be the input bandwidth to update the computer with the moves. yes a cheater could have - for example - a subdermal implant that vibrates to update them with a killer mid-game line to go down, but, without the internet, it would be a huge uphill struggle to update the board with the moves. certainly not impossible, especially if you were very dedicated, but very, very hard to get right, especially without getting caught under such scrutinous circumstances

mrguyorama 4y ago
The set up of the board at the start is static, so even a very naive approach of "piece at square (nibble, nibble) moves to square (nibble, nibble)" only requires two bytes per turn. I would expect there to be IMMENSELY better ways to encode this state update if I wasn't a dunce, and the people making cheating hardware are very good at that style of compression.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  > piece at square (nibble, nibble) moves to square (nibble, nibble) Chess notation is very compact, you don't even need to say where the starting piece was in most cases because it's implied by the move. If you have 2 rooks on A1 and H1, and the move says rh4, only one of your rooks can legally make that move. However if the move was rc1, both rooks could make that move so you do need to disambiguate.
  - permo-w 4y ago
    presuming that the cheater communicates with the system through some form of physical pressure, they could probably use a modified Morse code re-optimised for the frequency of letters in chess notation. according to wikipedia[1] this already exists and was developed for telegraph and radio transmission of chess games, although I have no idea how well optimised it is [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_notation
  - mabbo 4y ago
    That suggests a fun strategy for Magnus or anyone else playing Niemann: do lots of moves where there would be ambiguity in which piece was moved. Now however Niemann is entering the moves, he's got more to type and more places he might make a mistake.
    - permo-w 4y ago
      this is one of the reasons it may be best to find another method. one I thought of is to rank all the squares from most-used to least-used, then assign each of them a Morse code, simplest first. 64 squares is 2^6, so the maximum length input you would ever need is six. given a usage frequency for each of the squares, you could calculate your average input length by the sum of all len(square_code) * square_frequency divided by 64. assuming all squares are the same frequency (1/64), it's just the sum of all len(square_code) divided by 64, which I believe comes out at 322/64 = 5.03125, although I could be wrong about that. this makes your maximum necessary input per move 12 bits, but your average will be lower, depending on the frequency distribution of squares. (ignoring castling and en-passant for a moment) this is 2 bits more than using a piece+target square technique
serf 4y ago
just make sure to x-ray everything. 0]: https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html
dylan604 4y ago
>t's absolutely doable, especially for someone with the commitment of a chess grandmaster, would that same someone be able to pull something like this off on their own, or would they need assistance building/programming/etc? At that point, how many people need to be involved before it becomes a secret too big to keep, or dead bodies start showing up within the cheater's orbit?
- permo-w 4y ago
  I'm almost certain that if you gave me a month and a half decent budget I could whip something together. I sincerely doubt this is beyond the scope of one committed and somewhat intelligent person
- unrealhoang 4y ago
  plus one more programmer/engineer should be enough, the rest of the supply chain can be oblivious to the purpose.

mrguyorama 4y ago

The set up of the board at the start is static, so even a very naive approach of "piece at square (nibble, nibble) moves to square (nibble, nibble)" only requires two bytes per turn. I would expect there to be IMMENSELY better ways to encode this state update if I wasn't a dunce, and the people making cheating hardware are very good at that style of compression.

squeaky-clean 4y ago
> piece at square (nibble, nibble) moves to square (nibble, nibble) Chess notation is very compact, you don't even need to say where the starting piece was in most cases because it's implied by the move. If you have 2 rooks on A1 and H1, and the move says rh4, only one of your rooks can legally make that move. However if the move was rc1, both rooks could make that move so you do need to disambiguate.
- permo-w 4y ago
  presuming that the cheater communicates with the system through some form of physical pressure, they could probably use a modified Morse code re-optimised for the frequency of letters in chess notation. according to wikipedia[1] this already exists and was developed for telegraph and radio transmission of chess games, although I have no idea how well optimised it is [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_notation
- mabbo 4y ago
  That suggests a fun strategy for Magnus or anyone else playing Niemann: do lots of moves where there would be ambiguity in which piece was moved. Now however Niemann is entering the moves, he's got more to type and more places he might make a mistake.
  - permo-w 4y ago
    this is one of the reasons it may be best to find another method. one I thought of is to rank all the squares from most-used to least-used, then assign each of them a Morse code, simplest first. 64 squares is 2^6, so the maximum length input you would ever need is six. given a usage frequency for each of the squares, you could calculate your average input length by the sum of all len(square_code) * square_frequency divided by 64. assuming all squares are the same frequency (1/64), it's just the sum of all len(square_code) divided by 64, which I believe comes out at 322/64 = 5.03125, although I could be wrong about that. this makes your maximum necessary input per move 12 bits, but your average will be lower, depending on the frequency distribution of squares. (ignoring castling and en-passant for a moment) this is 2 bits more than using a piece+target square technique

serf 4y ago

just make sure to x-ray everything. 0]: https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html

dylan604 4y ago

>t's absolutely doable, especially for someone with the commitment of a chess grandmaster, would that same someone be able to pull something like this off on their own, or would they need assistance building/programming/etc? At that point, how many people need to be involved before it becomes a secret too big to keep, or dead bodies start showing up within the cheater's orbit?

permo-w 4y ago
I'm almost certain that if you gave me a month and a half decent budget I could whip something together. I sincerely doubt this is beyond the scope of one committed and somewhat intelligent person
unrealhoang 4y ago
plus one more programmer/engineer should be enough, the rest of the supply chain can be oblivious to the purpose.