[HN Gopher] Fairer Chess: A Reversal of Two Opening Moves in Che...
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Fairer Chess: A Reversal of Two Opening Moves in Chess Creates
Balance
Author : sova
Score : 66 points
Date : 2021-08-08 19:36 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| JerryDot wrote:
| 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.
| shmageggy wrote:
| 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.
| ummonk wrote:
| > 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.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > 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).
| 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.
| Asraelite wrote:
| 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
| fsckboy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bonzini wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| After "e4 d5 dxe4", White could play "Bb5+ Bxe8", capturing
| the king. This new game is very, very different from chess.
| bonzini wrote:
| According to the rules in the paper the first of two moves
| cannot be a check. The only good followup for white would
| be Nf3 Nxe4.
| __s wrote:
| You mean Nc3 Nxe4
| tromp wrote:
| Can the first of two moves be a checkmate, as in the
| reverse Fools Mate?
|
| e2-e4, f7-f6, g7-g5, Qd1-h5#
| reedf1 wrote:
| 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.
| awb wrote:
| Some famous GMs agree with you:
|
| > Some players, including world champions such as Jose Raul
| Capablanca, Emanuel Lasker, and Bobby Fischer, have expressed
| fears of a "draw death" as chess becomes more deeply analyzed.
|
| > To alleviate this danger, Capablanca and Fischer both
| proposed chess variants to revitalize the game, while Lasker
| suggested changing how draws and stalemate are scored.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_ches...
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| The 1984 championship, which was played with a first to 6
| wins format, had to be abandoned due to draws. It started on
| the 10th of September 1984, and was abandoned on the 15th of
| February 1985 after 40 draws and only 8 decisive games.
|
| The result was controversial (the championship match would be
| restarted), and the other alternative formats that have been
| used are also controversial. Such as the reigning champion
| retaining the championship if a decisive result isn't
| produced, and the current format where they play classical
| games, then rapid games if it's tied, then blitz games if
| it's still tied, then an "armageddon" game if it's still
| tied. The most recent championship match was decided by rapid
| games, which a lot of people basically considered to be a
| non-result.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| This has always bothered me about soccer. 90+ minutes of
| somewhat complex team play, positioning, footwork, and
| endurance... and at the end of it the winner is decided by
| penalty kicks, which feel like an entirely different game.
| Tarsul wrote:
| the problem with soccer is that good ideas to improve the
| game (e.g. make the time stop like in Basketball: Always
| when the ball is in play the clock ticks, when the ball
| is outside stop the clock. This would mean less players
| on the ground running out the clock with fake injuries)
| are not implemented due to how the leagues are organized
| (UEFA/FIFA etc.). Whereas in the NBA every year they
| change the rules, e.g. the best rule change came a couple
| years ago where they put the shot clock reset of an
| offensive rebound to 14 seconds instead of 24 seconds -
| faster gameplay. Everyone wins.
|
| Would also love different overtime ideas played out in
| soccer, e.g. put players out of the game. When it's 8 vs
| 8 maybe that leads to more goals in overtime or
| something... also, there was a time/place where penalties
| were shot differently (with running with the ball like in
| hockey), so there exist opportunities to change but as
| far as I see it there's an unwillingness.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Used to be a coin toss but penalty kicks are nicer to
| watch. But yes penalties are a completely different game.
| That's completely assumed however. You can't really
| expect player to keep going after 120 minutes and you
| need a way to decide which team goes through.
| gerdesj wrote:
| 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?
| fogof wrote:
| Here is a link https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.04374 to the paper
| you are probably talking about. Coming from DeepMind (and with
| Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik as a coauthor), they
| studied a bunch of chess variants by training AlphaZero to play
| on them. In addition to no-castling, they also studied variants
| where pawns can always move two steps forward, and where it's
| possible to capture your own pieces.
| zone411 wrote:
| 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.
|
| Chess960 is also a pretty good solution that reduces the value of
| memorizing openings.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| gerdesj wrote:
| 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
| andy_ppp wrote:
| 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.
| Someone wrote:
| FIFA experimented with that and rejected it.
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| sobriquet9 wrote:
| Why not let black choose color after first move of white?
| seoaeu wrote:
| Seems like that would just result in a lookup table of the
| twenty moves for white and whether you should swap for them
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That's not what the paper proposes, though. And doing that
| would invalidate a lot of chess tactics that rely on
| alternating moves.
| fsiefken wrote:
| 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
| User23 wrote:
| 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.
| ogogmad wrote:
| What about a pie-slicing approach? White makes the first move,
| and black decides whether he wants to switch places.
| ydnaclementine wrote:
| 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
|
| Paul Morphy (one of the greats) commonly played mortals a rook or
| more down
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