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1D Chess
- naorz 7mo agoFun stuff, love it!
- tkapin 7mo agoNice! :)
- schmeichel 7mo agoFinally, a version of Chess I can understand. Thank you.
- asibahi 7mo agoThis is really nice. Incidentally, there is an actual 1D game that is one of the most popular games on the planet: Backgammon.
- zniturah 7mo agoGood observation. Considering stacking of pieces maybe 1.5D though.
- a3w 7mo agoChess has different pieces, which has higher entropy than a true 1d backgammon or 1d checkers with only one piece a field. You could play with pieces that have a value of 1..N instead. Starting with 2,3, and 5 value pieces, and splitting them as needed. Making it one-dimensional again, while keeping 100% of the rules. Final verdict, therefore: backgammon is 1D, not 1.5. We could pretend that the second dimension was not playing a role in tactics back then, since it was very recently invented, like the brothers Wright invented the third dimension a hundred years ago. Or some hot air balloon at a world faire did it.
- traderj0e 7mo agoThe "dimensions" in these board games isn't a mathematical/topology thing, is it? Normally one dimension = one real number space. Every board game ever would fit in 1D then, "2D" chess included. I'm fine calling Backgammon 1.5-D. Physically you focus on a single dimension, and the second one matters too but it's not the same.
- highphive 7mo agoThat's a good point, you could surely model full chess in a single dimension, it would just be that each pieces' movement rules would be more confusing E.g. a pawn can move exactly 8 squares towards its opponents end (16 on its first move if no piece occupies 8 squares away), but can only capture 7 or 9 squares forward (with some extra modulo math to prevent wrapping)
- traderj0e 7mo agoYeah and it'd be even worse if you want to flatten out the piece colors and types into the 1D array.
- moffkalast 7mo agoBackgammon, the game everyone's seen and at the same time nobody knows how to play :P
- Sharlin 7mo agoI learned to play backgammon because it was one of the three games on my Nokia phone circa 2001 :P
- dhosek 7mo agoMy brother and I once took a train trip from L.A. to Omaha and back for a friend’s wedding and played backgammon for most of the trip. For weeks afterwards, I saw backgammon everywhere (most notably when reading dialogue-heavy books with lots of 1-line paragraphs).
- traderj0e 7mo agoSolitaire and Hearts too. Well I actually know and love Hearts, but most people seem to know it as "that game in Windows where you play random cards"
- vscode-rest 7mo agoYou’d be surprised – take a Backgammon board to a table in at a cafe in a popular area and chances are someone will sit down to play with you. Can be a good way of meeting people in a new area. (or new people in an old area!)
- jibal 7mo agoIt was a good way to while away the time at jury duty back in the days when you had to physically be there until you were called. I encountered a tournament player who beat me maybe 4 times out of 5. I also played in a chess tournament where my opponent was considerably stronger and faster and quickly put me in a position where I had to think long and hard to try to avoid disaster (fruitlessly in the end). She would make her move, wait a few seconds to see if I would reply, and then get up and disappear into a back room where, I found out later, she was playing backgammon. I looked her up and learned that she was a rapidly rising women's chess star but was better known as a semi-pro backgammon player.
- etskinner 7mo agoMancala is roughly 1D too!
- pessimizer 7mo agoThere are tons of 1D games. Somebody else mentioned Mancala, and I'd also mention the venerable Game of Goose, which can become anything from Candyland to sophisticated things like Kramer and Kiesling's That's Life or Parlett's Hare & Tortoise. Hell, Monopoly is also 1D if we're willing to allow circuits like Mancala.
- anthk 7mo agoGoose/ Snakes and Ladders can be played with no human players at all. There is no interaction, just randomness.
- anthk 7mo agoLudo/Parcheese could have been more played among Southern Europe/Latin American people.
- sieste 7mo agoIt took me an embarrassing number of attempts to win.
- bbx 7mo agoOh very interesting. Even with these restrictions, there are quite a few variations, and it seems only one ends up with white winning.
- lschueller 7mo agoCool idea. This is smart and lean. I like it
- tintor 7mo agoThe first move is always: white rook takes black rook, then the only remaining move for black is to move the knight away, which results in checkmate.
- nippoo 7mo agoIf you play the game, you realise this ends up in stalemate.
- Fabricio20 7mo agoI'm not very good at chess, but I dont get why most things are considered a stalemate? I strategically remove all pieces of the enemy, leaving only the king against my rook/tower whatever its called, the king has nowhere to run. In my eyes it's a checkmate. The game just calls it a stalemate. Would be a stalemate if I couldn't do anything, but I can kill the enemy king.
- al_borland 7mo agoIt's a stalemate because while the king can't move, he isn't under active attack. There is nowhere he can legally move, but he's safe where he's at.
- jandrese 7mo agoThat rule caught me up too. In regular chess if it is your opponents turn and their only pieces are a king in the 1,8 square and a pawn that is pressed up against one of your pawns and you have rooks in the 2,1 and 8,7 squares that counts as a victory does it not?
- School-Cotton 7mo agoNo. That is a draw assuming it is the player with only a king’s turn to move. Translating your notation to normal chess notation: White king on h1, black rooks on a2 and g8, black king in some random other place, white to move. That is a draw, because white is NOT in check, but has no legal moves. That scenario is called stalemate. If white were in check, it would be checkmate and a win for black. Set it up on any chess analysis board website and it will say the game is a draw.
- vladde 7mo agoi could not beat it, and i can't read that chess notation
- DrammBA 7mo agothe notation is just an array of move tuples, each tuple contains 1 move for white and 1 move for black, where each move is written as <1st letter of piece name><destination square>
- thesuitonym 7mo agoThe letter is the piece to move, and the number is the index to move to, starting from 1 on the left. The first alphanumeric pair is your move, then the computer's move. Comma. Your move, computer's move...
- qup 7mo agoThe first move after the comma is yours (open with kNight to 4), and the second move is apparently predetermined or always chosen.
- burnt-resistor 7mo agoThere's a coordinate-based solution in the source code issues. I couldn't elucidate that notation either. https://github.com/Rowan441/1d-chess/issues/1 https://github.com/Rowan441/1d-chess/issues/1 Edit: There's a second solution where instead of moving the rook back 2, move the king forward one and the take the black knight with the rook as the checkmate move.
- northfield27 7mo agoHaha, i was taking N4 and N6, but didn’t figure the steps after that. To win we need to let knight die because rook can move multiple steps to kill the king. From a third person perspective R2 is a deceptive move that takes advantage algorithm to make the black king back off to kill its knight.
- aNapierkowski 7mo agoyou could also just move your king on that move same result knight cant move, only king can, so it has to back away
- palata 7mo agoIt was a lot more fun than I first thought!
- quuxplusone 7mo agoMentioned in TFA: This version of chess is given by Martin Gardner in his "Mathematical Games" column of July 1980 (pages 27 and 31) — https://www.jstor.org/stable/24966361 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24966361 — and the analysis of White's mate is given in the column of August 1980 (page 18) — https://www.jstor.org/stable/24966383 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24966383. I do wonder how things would change if the board were 9 cells long; 10 cells long; etc. Also, it seems "in the spirit" to permit castling if neither K nor R has moved yet: i.e., from the position K _ R N r _ n k White ought to be permitted to _ R K N r _ n k (Or maybe there's a stronger argument for R K _ N r _ n k, actually. The former was conceptually "rook moves halfway toward king, then king moves to the other side of rook"; but the latter is "rook moves two steps in king's direction while king moves to the other side of rook.") I'm pretty sure this wouldn't change the analysis on the 8-cell board at all, though. I wonder if it would change the analysis on any size of board.
- al_borland 7mo agoMaybe I'm not good enough at chess to understand the strategy here, but how would castling be useful in this 1-D game? Castling in a normal game protects your King and activates the Rook. In this 1-D game, your King starts out protected behind the Rook. If you castle and end up in a _ R K N position, your king is exposed and your Rook is trapped behind the King, useless, with no way to ever get it back out. The Rook seems essential for mate, and its power has been eliminated.
- teiferer 7mo agoExactly. Feels like R K N would be a more suitable initial position in which castling would swap the king into safety, provided it has not moved and is not in check... Though maybe in that case the best first move for both is to castle and we are non the wiser (back to the original starting position)
- pedrosorio 7mo agoI had claude code implement minimax (w/ alpha-beta pruning) for the general n cells version of the game. I checked n=6...20. It looks like white wins for n=6 and n=8 with perfect play, otherwise it is a draw. With random play, black seems to have the edge regardless of board size. About 2/3 of the games end in a draw, but black wins 20% and white 13%.
- kkaske 7mo agoI was only able to beat this after a couple retries. The hint was hard to read.
- gef 7mo agoReminds me of Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland, where he describes Lineland. A one-dimensional world whose King can only move forward and backward, cannot conceive of sideways, and considers his tiny segment of existence complete and sufficient. The Linelanders are portrayed as pitiable, intellectually imprisoned by their single dimension. Much like us in our three :)
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- rOOmbambar9 7mo agoIt's very interesting and fun!)
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- juleiie 7mo agoThat finally confirmed that I am too regarded for chess if even 1D is too hard yay
- addybojangles 7mo agoSilly nice brain teaser
- BiraIgnacio 7mo agolove it!
- tempestn 7mo agoThat's actually a fun little puzzle.
- darepublic 7mo agoI won after four attempts. Pretty sure it was perfect play so yes white has forced win
- sdthjbvuiiijbb 7mo agoYeah. I think 1. N4 leads to a white win. It's fairly easy to verify that a black rook move will lead to a white win (1...R5 2. R2 and 1...Rx4 2. Rx4 N5 3. Rx5#). So the critical line is 1. N4 N5, but then 2. Nx6+ K7 3. R4 also leads to a win: 3...Kx6 4. K2 K7 5. Rx5# and 3...N3+ 4. K2 N5 5. N8 Kx8 6. Rx5#. There are probably other ways to win too.
- hart_russell 7mo agoI don’t know why this is stalemate: N4 N5, N6 K7, R5. Wouldn’t rook have the king in checkmate?
- _air 7mo agoBlack has no legal moves because of the knight but they aren't in check
- Scarblac 7mo agoThe rook doesnt attack the king because N6 is in the way. So black is not in check and has no legal moves, so stalemate.
- superxpro12 7mo agoIsnt that a forced move to K8? The king is forced to take N6 or move to K8, either of which results in a capture. Isn't this the definition of checkmate, not stalemate?
- non- 7mo agoKing isn't allowed to move to a square that would put him in check, so there are no legal moves available. Chess rules.
- systoll 7mo agoThe relevant rule from standard chess: > Leaving one’s own king under attack, exposing one’s own king to attack and also ’capturing’ the opponent’s king are not allowed. N6 and K8 both expose the black king to attack, so black is not allowed to make those moves. And with no other options, black has no legal move. And since black isn't in check where they are right now – that's a stalemate.
- hackyhacky 7mo agoIf you enjoyed this, you might like Mind Chess, which can be played without a board and pieces [1]: Consider Mind Chess. Two players face each other. One says "Check." The other says "Check." The first says "Check." This continues until one of them says, instead, "Checkmate." That player wins -- superficially. In fact, the challenge is to put off checkmate for as long as possible, while still winning. This may be better stated: you truly win Mind Chess if you call "Checkmate" just before your opponent was about to. [1] http://www.eblong.com/zarf/essays/mindgame.html http://www.eblong.com/zarf/essays/mindgame.html
- anyfoo 7mo agoWhich reminds me that I just lost the game. I also lost the game not too long ago, but before that, I think I didn't actually lose it for a decade of more? And losing it wasn't even because it was mentioned anywhere, I genuinely just thought of it by myself, after forgetting about it for so long. So my sincerest apologies if my comment just made any readers lose their long streak in the game.
- mckirk 7mo agoDamnit, I am pretty sure I had a few-year-streak going until just now. Welp, off to the grind again, I suppose.
- lamasery 7mo agoI've lost it a lot lately, for some reason, after what I suppose was my third multi-year victory streak. Like, five or so losses this year.
- djsavvy 7mo agoSame here, oddly enough, and every time besides this one was without anyone else mentioning it.
- anyfoo 7mo agoI think once you lost the game once, it's much easier to lose it again relatively shortly after. It takes some long term distraction (and nobody mentioning it) to forget about it again.
- sjdv1982 7mo agoZugzwang!
- hypendev 7mo agoDon't know when was the last time I had so much fun with chess. Quite intuitive, clicked on the first click. Would enjoy so much if there were more of these, feels like an obligation-free chess puzzle.
- aktenlage 7mo agoVery cool. Reminds me of 1D Pacman: https://abagames.itch.io/paku-paku https://abagames.itch.io/paku-paku
- wes-k 7mo agoI love this! Such a simple game with a fun level of skill. High score 17485 feels pretty good (edit: Oh! Low power mode on the computer makes the game run slow, thus much easier to get crazy high scores). Reminds me of SFCave and Nanana Crash for the simplicity and surprising replay ability. https://megami.starcreator.com/nanaca-crash/ https://megami.starcreator.com/nanaca-crash/ (Failing to find an online version of SFCave a.t.m :'()
- aaaasmile 7mo agoVery cool!
- topce 7mo agoI went in other direction ;-) https://topce.github.io/chess960x32/ https://topce.github.io/chess960x32/
- Dante77711 7mo agoNice, fun and interesting! :)
- hfnjdbekwbiw 7mo ago[flagged]
- hfnjdbekwbiw 7mo ago[flagged]
- chedoku 7mo agoIf you like 1D chess, you'll probably like other chess-themed puzzles as well: https://chedoku.com/blog/chessPuzzles https://chedoku.com/blog/chessPuzzles
- tromp 7mo ago1D Go is also interesting and doesn't require any change in rules or starting position. TIL that it is known as Alak [1]. One of the open problems in our Combinatorics of Go paper [2] is whether you can play a game that goes through all possible legal 1xn positions for any n>2, which we were only able to verify up to n=7. [1] https://senseis.xmp.net/?Alak https://senseis.xmp.net/?Alak [2] https://tromp.github.io/go/gostate.pdf https://tromp.github.io/go/gostate.pdf
- Computer0 7mo agoI was expecting a blog post regarding Iran strategy...
- MinimalAction 7mo agoI love chess! This version was fun too. If 1. Rx6,it is stalemate. So it must be 1. N4 N5. Then we could proceed with, 2. Nx6+ K7. Now, if you capture the knight (Rxe), it is stalemate again. So sacrifice the knight, 3. R4 Kx6 so that you force black to zugzwang with 4. K2 K7, and finally, 5. Rx5#
- slopinthebag 7mo agoI was confused why 3.R2 is drawing, but not 3.R4 since black can check with the knight either way, but it's fairly obvious in hindsight - if black checks instead of capturing, you don't take, you go K2 and force black into zugzwang. Clever.
- frunkp 7mo agoThose who play go may enjoy the variants: https://www.govariants.com/variants/rules-list https://www.govariants.com/variants/rules-list Tetris is a fun one to try!
- sillyfluke 7mo agoI honestly thought this post was going to be about the Iran war.
- jibal 7mo agoN4 N5 Nx6+ K7 R4 Kx6 R2 (or K2) K7 Rx5#
- MagicMoonlight 7mo agoWhy does it end in a stalemate if all my pieces are alive and they have none? That’s not a stalemate, I can move freely and get them.
- chris_va 7mo agoIn chess they cannot move onto a spot that would put them in check. If they can make no legal moves, it's a stalemate.
- dargscisyhp 7mo agoThat is a standard rule in chess. If your opponent has no legal moves (i.e. no way to move without moving his king into check) and is not currently in check, it is considered stalemate, which is a draw.
- jpablo 7mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalemate#History_of_the_stalemate_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalemate#History_of_the_stale...
- gcheong 7mo agoMinor typo: assming -> assuming :)
- Keyframe 7mo agoThis is stupid. I like it!
- dwa3592 7mo agoI am ashamed to admit that i could not solve that even though i consider myself a decent player.
- keeganpoppen 7mo agojust work backward from the moves it allows you to make— it tells you when it’s hopeless, so thus if it lets you move, you’re onto something. took me like 9 or 10 tries easily.
- keeganpoppen 7mo agothat took me way longer than i thought it would, but made me all the happier for it
- uvdn7 7mo agoThis is something AI would never take away from us.
- Nevermark 7mo agoI thought for sure this article was going to be political commentary! (I would pay a lot for some fat 1500 page, leather-bound tome of wisdom and anecdotes about historical foot guns, by Carl von Clausewitz, titled "1D Chess". And it's inevitable multi-authored, Harvard-published much thicker contemporary-world sequel.)
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- cindyllm 7mo ago[dead]
- DemocracyFTW2 7mo ago0D chess is where real masters shine!
- freetime2 7mo agoI tried and failed a couple times before looking at the hint. And then I had to ask ChatGPT to explain the hint because I didn't understand chess notation. But with all of that out of the way, I am now winning 100% of my matches and feel it's not an overstatement to call myself a 1D chess grandmaster.
- j2kun 7mo agoHow often are you playing as black?
- freetime2 7mo agoAs often as the system decides that I should play as black.
- SV_BubbleTime 7mo agoHa. I thought mine was broken on iPhone for a second.
- forrestthewoods 7mo agoI still don’t understand the notation. What does N4 N5 mean? The knight can’t move one space? I’m so confused.
- jojobas 7mo agoOdd moves for white, even for black.
- slumberlust 7mo agoFirst number in the set is your move; Second is Opponents move.
- jibal 7mo ago(your) kNight moved to the 4th (1-indexed) square then (their) kNight moved to the 5th (1-indexed) square
- chatmasta 7mo agoWow, Trump’s job is harder than I thought.
- mememememememo 7mo agoNice little puzzle!
- igor47 7mo agoOh I made one of these once! In mine you play against other people. https://1dchess.igor47.com/ https://1dchess.igor47.com/
- hybirdss 7mo agospent way too long on this before realizing the knight is basically the whole game in 1d
- armanhq 7mo agoMore fun than I expected! Thank you :)
- daynthelife 7mo agoIt frustrates me that the site does not give the strongest defense for black. The position is mate in 6, not 5: 1. N4 N5 2. Nx6+ K7 3. R4 N3+! 4. K2 N5 5. N8! Kx8 6. Rx5#
- otherme123 7mo agoYou give "3 ... N3" a !, when it is literally the only legal move the black has.
- daynthelife 7mo agoThe site plays Kx6 instead. You're right though that I was generous with the exclams; all the moves are easy to find in reality.
- bdcs 7mo agoTrying to lose is also fun (as white) Some observations: * Knights are color bound * You can mate with Knight & King (K+K is still insufficient material) * 3 fold repetition still applies (and has a popup!)
- quuxplusone 7mo agoHow do you mate with N+K? Surely your King can't give check, and if your Knight is giving check then the enemy king can just take a step toward it to get out of check.
- abhinaystha 7mo agocreative!!!
- anotheryou 7mo agoIs this stalemate correct? https://imgur.com/a/Z7in8sl https://imgur.com/a/Z7in8sl Have not even lost a piece yet!
- pbardea 7mo agoIf it's black's move then yep! The king is not in check and it cannot move right otherwise it's in check by the knight and it cannot take left since it'll be in check by the rook.
- anotheryou 7mo agoahhh thanks
- ratmeadow 7mo agoOk seems like I don't understand and really dislike chess stalemate/draw rules. So if I make a move which is directly causative to my opponent having no moves which would not result in checkmate, this means the same is a draw?? That makes no sense to me.
- rbits 7mo agoI think it's because the rules of chess don't state that making a move that puts yourself in checkmate results in a loss, they state that you're straight up not allowed to make that move. So if the only moves you have left would put you in checkmate, they're not legal moves.
- aidenn0 7mo agoThis is part of why so many games on a competitive level end in a draw; the player that lacks a path to victory will try to force a stalemate. Since this makes it harder for the player with an early advantage to win (by constraining their moves), it is considered a feature, not a bug.
- ergocoder 7mo agoThere aren't that many combinations. I finally won hahaha
- phplovesong 7mo agoBasically tictactoe. Ends in a draw every time.
- jibal 7mo agoWhite has a forced win.
- deadlypointer 7mo agoEven in the winning line black can force stalemate in multiple ways,how is it a forced win?
- otherme123 7mo agoN4, black has three legal moves: - RxN RxR, N5 (unique), RxN 1-0 - R5, R2 RxN (if R6, NxR, 1-0), RxR N5 (unique), RxN, 1-0 ... N5 NxR+ K7 (unique), R4 KxN (if N3+, K2 N5, N8 KxN, RxN 1-0), R2 K7 (or N3, RxN 1-0), RxN (1-0)
- frostyel 7mo ago[dead]
- yuppiepuppie 7mo agoThis is my kind of chess :) I’ve added it to the HN Arcade https://hnarcade.com/games/games/1d-chess https://hnarcade.com/games/games/1d-chess
- vdelpuerto 7mo ago[flagged]
- dfordp11 7mo ago[dead]
- tom-blk 7mo agoHehe cool idea, approved!
- GKakhiani 7mo agoHaha had some fun
- GKakhiani 7mo agoHaha had a lotta fun
- neverkn0wsb357 7mo agoThis might have a bug. I have the following configuration. K - King H - Knight R - Rook E - Enemy King X - Empty K X X X R K E X But it indicates it’s a draw by stalemate. There is only 1 legal move for black here. Which is to move back to X. If it takes my Knight rook gets it. He moves back, I move my Knight out of the way. Checkmate. Edit: oh wait nvm there’s no legal move for black.
- MegaSec 7mo agoI don’t think it is a bug, the enemy king can’t move back to X because the knight is attacking that space. Traditionally you can’t move into check in chess.
- splonk 7mo agoIt's interesting that the page actually uses minimax to determine black's play. I kind of assumed it would be a simple lookup table given the small state space of the game. I suppose it makes it easier to add more variants.
- daynthelife 7mo agoIt clearly doesn't use minimax, since it doesn't play the best move for black in the critical line, leading to a mate in 5 instead if a mate in 6. Best line is N4 N5, Nx6+ K7, R4 N3+!, K2 N5, N8! Kx8, Rx5#. The site has black instead play Kx6 on the third move, allowing a faster mate.
- atlasagentsuite 7mo ago[dead]
- ctool 7mo ago[dead]
- jaani090 7mo agointeresting game
- xg15 7mo ago(Chess noob here) Always found the "protect the king" rules in regular chess interesting but also somewhat strange. (The rules that make it impossible to actually take a king and instead let the game reason on the "possibility" that a king could be taken in the next turn - i.e. check and checkmate) As long as only check and checkmate are considered, the rules are a bit weird, but should not change the game dynamics, as they only enforce the moves that any rational player would do anyway. But adding stalemates to it seems to actually change the gameplay, and this 1D variant makes it even more obvious. If you compared this chess variant with a 1D chess where the king would behave like a normal piece (except taking it would end the game) and any draw would have to be called manually, the game would behave completely different.
- ctool 7mo agoA workable minimalist variant is slimchess, which contains one of each piece on a 3x8 board. It's the smallest chess board that can preserve all the rules (including castling).
- choam2426 7mo agoi spend 43 minute
- questerzen 6mo agoThe given best-game solution is not optimal: Black can delay mate for another move to give a forced win in 11 ply rather than in 9 ply. Optimal is: N4 n5 N6+ k7 R4 as given, but Black can delay mate with ... n3+, rather than ...k6. The remaining moves are then: K2 n5 N8 k8 R5#. Perhaps your minimax code doesn't include moves-to-mate in the move score?
- JasperBlank2001 6mo agoI really like such simple games, to help Analise it can be fun to look at the whole game at once, if you want see that i made it a graph at https://github.com/JasperBlank/1DChess https://github.com/JasperBlank/1DChess