[HN Gopher] Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top... ___________________________________________________________________ Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top engine move is forbidden Author : bopjesvla Score : 368 points Date : 2022-12-01 10:49 UTC (12 hours ago) (HTM) web link (humanchess.abcd.party) (TXT) w3m dump (humanchess.abcd.party) | twawaaay wrote: | Naive. I can create an engine which will plan with this | restriction in mind. | | In other words, whatever the rules, you can have an engine that | will try to do the best according to the rules. | RivieraKid wrote: | How would such engine work? Chess engines work by evaluating a | lot of positions. But in order to evaluate a single Human Chess | position, you need to run a normal chess engine for a minute to | determine the top move. | twawaaay wrote: | Yes and no. | | I think you overestimate how much you would have to defer to | this external engine that would have to say which move is | "top". | | Every move you advance you chessboard situation by one move | only and that move is already part of the tree calculated | previously. You don't need to search through massively more | new moves because, assuming sane players, the move each | player makes is one of the very few top moves previously | considered by the engine. | ndr wrote: | How quickly does this converge to anti-chess? | | When you have mate-in 1 it's impossible to have anything else | recommended by the computer. Flip of a coin for which one is on | top when you have two? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losing_chess | vippy wrote: | har har. | iLoveOncall wrote: | Is this called "Human" chess because top engine moves would not | be humanely possible? | | I have a low chess rank (900 on chess.com), yet on an okay game | 25% of my moves will be "top engine moves": | https://i.imgur.com/TGaDtzr.png | | I could even easily find games where I had 50% of top engine | moves. | | It's really not exceptional. Often the top engine move is the | only good move and that only good move is pretty obvious. | ht85 wrote: | It is "Human" chess because you win by forcing your opposition | to mess up, instead of pursuing perfection yourself. | 10xDev wrote: | > you win by forcing your opposition to mess up | | You just described all of chess. | ht85 wrote: | You mean all of humanity | sebstefan wrote: | It's a cool concept but the first naive thought that comes to | mind for me is that white could just easily dominate by taking | advantage of the fact that taking a queen is almost always the | top engine move. So just by maintaining relative king safety on | white's side, you just open your queen early and make sure that | every move there onwards hangs your queen in some fashion. It's | very easy to hang a queen. You just have an invincible juggernaut | for the first half of the game until you've demolished enough | pieces to make it hard to find ways to hang your queen, and by | that point the material advantage is such that the opponent might | just resign. | ouid wrote: | giving checkmate is a loss, the win condition for human chess | is giving check in such a way that there is only one legal | move. So hanging your queen might be good offensively, but its | not good defense. | | Moreover if you hang your queen in more than one way, your | opponent can still take it in whichever way the computer | evaluates as worse. Which is often easy to guess. The weird | part of this will come from the fact that accuracy of engines | diverges very rapidly off of the critical path. Once you're | down a queen, you're basically free to play however you like. | | There are a lot of dynamics here. | aqme28 wrote: | As long as you only leave them with one way to take the queen. | sebstefan wrote: | Damn that's true | meandthewallaby wrote: | The article states that if there are multiple moves the | engine recommends, that they all count as the "optimal" | move, even if there's an indication of preference by the | engine. | aqme28 wrote: | I like the idea of not being allowed to use any move the | engine would recommend. Blunders only. | squeaky-clean wrote: | Lichess has a variant called "Antichess". If you can take | a piece, you have to. No checks/checkmate rules. First | person to have zero remaining pieces wins. | | You basically want to "blunder" into giving your opponent | long chains of captures while avoiding any positions that | allow your opponent to hang a piece. | Ma8ee wrote: | Like drunk monkey Kung fu. | biesnecker wrote: | That is quite similar to how I play now anyway, so I | might be really good at this version. | yamtaddle wrote: | I'm approaching 40 years old, have played chess off and | on since I was a kid, and I'm not sure I've ever played a | match that didn't include several blunders. Like, on the | off chance I'm playing someone who doesn't blunder often, | I'll certainly pick up their slack. | | My game quality is measured in how many times I say | "fuck!" right after moving a piece. A very good game for | me is about a two-fuck game. | bee_rider wrote: | The fun thing about chess, you don't seem to think you | are good, but I can't imagine only making two obvious | mistakes in a game! It grows with you, haha. | yamtaddle wrote: | No no, that's a _very good_ game for me :-) | | Most of them it's more like four or five "oh my god I | hope they don't see that thing I spotted the second I | took my hand off" moments--and that's just the ones I | notice before they're exploited. I'm sure I make tons of | moves that anyone half-decent would call blunders but | that simply go unnoticed by both players at the board. | | I'm so very bad at spotting diagonal attacks, especially. | Anyone who can open up their bishops then play for time | will eventually see me put my queen in some dumbshit | situation that lets them take it free or cheap in a | single move, for instance, not even any multi-move | planning required. | abnry wrote: | If chess is truly a drawn game with perfect play then | whoever makes the second to last blunder is the winner. | chrisbaker98 wrote: | Just because there are multiple ways to take the queen, | doesn't mean that none of them is clearly better than the | others. | mrslave wrote: | Maybe it could allow for blunders? | | While I enjoy the conversation ideas like these create, I'm | often left wondering why Fischer random isn't more popular. | Scarblac wrote: | There will be opening theory soon, and it will be essential in | many cases. | | For instance after 1.e3 e6 2.Qh5, White threatens Qxf7+ which | would force black to play the top engine move. Then 2...g6 | 3.Qxg6 is one idea -- but there are _two_ recaptures, fxg6 and | hxg6, and only one of them can be the top engine move (hxg6, I | 'm guessing). So 3...fxg6 _probably_ refutes this idea. But are | you sure enough as white to try to claim a win if black goes | hxg6? | | And after say 1.e3 e6 2.Qh5 g6 3.Qxh7 (avoiding that line and | going for material), not only does black not have to care about | their rook (white can't take it, it would be the best move), | black actually has 3...Qh4 winning -- he threatens 4...Qxf2+, | white can't play 4.Qxh4 as that's the best engine move, and | white's queen is threatened twice, so black will be able to | take it -- _provided he checked this line before the game to | know which piece to take with_. | | Edit: it doesn't actually win, white has 4.Qf5 to defend f2... | what a strange game. | | Edit 2: once a piece is _en prise_ somewhere, the game can | otherwise become somewhat normal as taking it would be the best | move and so would moving it to a safe spot - so other moves can | be played as usual. But would they be good? | CaptainNegative wrote: | 1.e3 e6 2.Qh5 g6 3.Qxh7 Qh4 4. Qxf7+ Kd8 5. Qe8++ | Scarblac wrote: | Sigh, tried to do blindfold again, sorry. | tomesco wrote: | There must be a threshold above which making an engine move is | allowed. Because if there's a checkmate move, it will be the | best engine move and needs to be allowed. | tromp wrote: | No; checkmates are not needed. You win the game by almost | checkmating the opponent: by leaving them only one legal | move, which is thus necessarily the top engine move. | [deleted] | luxuryballs wrote: | So a costly check wins but checkmate loses. | Khoth wrote: | If you deliver checkmate, you lose. You have to instead force | your opponent into a situation where they only have one legal | move (which is trivially the best engine move). | throwawaymaths wrote: | Not necessarily. There could be two ways to checkmate and | you picked the one that was t the top move | drdeca wrote: | I don't see how one way of checkmating could be worse | than another way of checkmating? Do some engines give | different scores for different check-mating moves? | (Different moves from the same position I mean) | AstralStorm wrote: | You can force the opponent into a position where the only | move that saves them is a top engine move. Since they | cannot play that move, the other option is to surrender. | | So essentially this converts most mates in two into mates | in one, but some become ties by repetition. | II2II wrote: | The article had an illustration of this: the player put their | opponent into check where there was only one move to get out | of check. The opponent would have to make that move, whether | they were human or machine, so the player who made the | original move wins the game. | | It is an interesting variation on chess given the current | state of tournament play, yet it isn't really a solution to | the cheating problem since it is effectively a new game with | a new end-state. But you are probably right about there | needing to be some sort of threshold. While there the rules | of the variation says that any move with equal scores is | considered equivalent, I would imagine the players would need | a very intimate knowledge of how the engine scores moves in | certain scenarios. | jerf wrote: | As others have mentioned, that is accounted for in the rules. | | My immediate first reaction was also that it would be | interesting to have a variant that is the same except you are | allowed to checkmate, except then I realized the recursive | nature of how board positions are evaluated makes that | problematic. For instance, if there's a mate in 2, the first | move of the mate in two is now certainly the "best move". | Creeping up on a checkmate without ever making the "best | move" until the very last one might actually be harder than | the win condition based on strangling the opponent described | in the current rules. | sovnade wrote: | It just doesn't make sense though for that reason. You | can't sneak up on an engine. There's not a single engine | out there that wouldn't recognize a mate in 2 moves. Unless | the opponent blunders (which actually might be forced if | the best defensive move is blocked). | | It just seems like you're changing the objective of the | game entirely to the point where it's only slightly related | to chess. | remus wrote: | Could get very meta if you had a chess engine that knows how to | play human chess! | LeifCarrotson wrote: | That was my thought too. Does the engine know that the other | player is forbidden to play the top engine move on the next | turn? Then you can't just do something like c3 Nf6 Qa4 e5 | Qe4!? to hang the queen in the center, knowing that Nxe4 is | prohibited, because the strongest move for white if Nxe4 is | prohibited would have been Qe4! | EricMausler wrote: | Any move the human chess engine makes would be losing by | definition if it is also used as the bench mark. | | Therefor, such an engine can only hang in computation - | being unable to produce a top move because if it were to | make a suggestion then the actual best move changes to | avoid it. Since the engine is unable to produce a move - | there is no top engine move which makes every move legal. | | A normal game of chess is played while the engine locks up | on the sideline | AstralStorm wrote: | You forgot that the engine user may cheat and even if | they declare the engine there's no real way to detect if | they're truthful and not using a certain of the engine | tuned for Human Chess specifically. | Khoth wrote: | My first naive counterthought is that if you try to do that | then black can ignore your queen and use their queen to take | your pieces. You're a move ahead but you don't get a | snowballing advantage. | [deleted] | Bootvis wrote: | e4, Qf3, Qxf7 looks menacing | Scarblac wrote: | 1.e4 may well be the best move, 1.e3 is a lot safer. | | Edit: I didn't read the fine print. First moves are exempt. | nojs wrote: | I guess after 1. e4 e5 2. Qf3 black can safely play Qf6 | Bootvis wrote: | True, and as long as there are two ways to take (and there | are) Black must be fine. | okamiueru wrote: | The title "Human Chess is a chess variant where playing the top | engine move is forbidden" kinda suggests that the top move just | isn't available to the player. | | However, the thought you had, and similar ones, are very much | the intentional side-effect of the rules. The only way to win | the game, as stated, is forcing your opponent to make the top | engine move. Or, of course, correctly claim that your opponent | made such a move (even though it wasn't forced). Or, having | your opponent make the incorrect claim about your move. | | So, it isn't necessarily "playing good chess". Though, I must | say, I'm not qualified to have any good idea of what it would | mean to be good at this game. It definitely helps to be good at | chess, and have a good command of what are the correct engine | moves. Especially since you lose if you incorrectly claim a | position and opponent move was "the top engine line". | | I suppose most would reduce this to leaving the opponent to | only one legal move. In which case, the problem is is trivial. | But, after move 2? You need to know most opening lines, and | probably play intentionally bad in many situations. | | Hm, this is cooler the more I think about it. | | Imagine intentionally setting up material sacrifice with a | resulting choice of multiple moves for the opponent to | capitalize. If you can correctly evaluate the best computer | move, you have a strong advantage. If it is not obvious, then | the opponent might not dare to gamble the challenge. | | Has Hikaru tried this in one of his streams? I'm certain he | would have a blast. | | The only thing about this that doesn't "spark joy" are the | ambiguous practical implementations. | | - Which engine? This matters a lot. | | - How do you define the computational cut-off? CPU-minutes? | Move depth? Etc. Not necessarily a simple problem. | | - The rule "When multiple moves have the top score, they are | all top moves". Needs a specific score evaluation delta for | grouping "top moves". | | All of these could rather simply be resolved if it isn't very | important... might even add some uncertainty to it, for fun. | Like, say: 1. Stockfish 15. 2. Allow the computer whatever | resources it has available, 1 minute, and play some drum roll | sample. 3. Pawn-evlauation of 0.05. | bee_rider wrote: | I wonder -- at the top end the chess engines clearly compete | with each other and produce different results, that's how one | can be said to be better than the other, right? But against | us puny humans, especially novices, do they produce very | different outputs? Or is it just like, the moves to crush a | silly meat-brain are just super obvious, no need for | creativity. | | Especially in this game, the humans will be _trying_ to play | badly. | squeaky-clean wrote: | Some games from the most recent chess engine tournament | look whacky as hell. Like if you showed the games to a | grandmaster they would probably estimate it was 2 | completely new 400 elo players. | AstralStorm wrote: | Actually no, the top choice would be to force your opponent | into a position where the series of second best moves | literally destroys them. You're looking for traps where only | a particular move can save you. | | A minimally modified engine lookup wins here. | | There's a whole bunch of openings that ensure it for white, | this game is rigged even more than playing the best move, | even if you do enforce a random opening. | [deleted] | MereInterest wrote: | I'd also be interested in a variant where the engine- | recommended move is displayed to the players. It would take | out the uncertainty of whether a move is illegal, but would | allow for different win conditions (e.g. approach checkmate | without ever using an optimal move). | HelloNurse wrote: | Not wasting time with claims would be another very | practical advantage. | | A further variant for fairness purposes: let each player | bring their preferred chess engine, instead of arguing | about the choice of only one; and have each player run both | engines for mutual anti-cheating verification. Then either | the two engines agree on the best move (likely case if they | are both strong) or all moves that either engine considers | better than the other engine's best move (at least 2, | usually not too many) can be interdicted. | majikandy wrote: | This is what I thought it would be from the title. Top | players say that they don't necessarily see a top engine | move but can immediately identify one when it is played on | them. | Retric wrote: | It's an exaggeration but with some truth to it. Outside | of openings and end games the top move for a chess engine | is often different from the top move for a player. That | said, grandmasters do of course often play the top engine | move. | | Human players are dealing with both human limitations and | human limitations which really changes the game. So a | grandmaster can for example benefit from playing a | slightly weaker but less well known opening that they | have recently studied in depth with the assumption that | their opponent hasn't done the same. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | Botez gambit for the win. That's hilarious and I love it. | pkulak wrote: | I bet if you hang your queen 5-6 times, for one of those, | taking the queen won't be the top move. Just think about if | your queen would _still_ be hanging after a check that maybe | captures some other piece first. And then that strategy has | lost you your queen. | aarreedd wrote: | You could have two engines: a strong engine and a weak engine. | If the weak engine suggests a move then it's allowed. But if | the strong engines suggests a different move than it's | forbidden. | HelloNurse wrote: | But you'd need to fine-tune the stupidity of the weak engine | to have decent but not too good moves: an extra chore that | would amply offset any increase of fun. | EricMausler wrote: | I had a similar naive thought, but it doesnt resolve easily. | For starters, Black can do the same thing just a move behind. | | Second, if you ever hang your queen two ways at once - one of | them could be a less optimal take (-5 is not as good as -8) | | Third, whoever is a move ahead in a race of taking pieces will | be the first to run out of weak pieces to take. Their available | move pool is shrinking faster. Not sure how it would play out, | black would need to cater to it by removing defenders and | hanging pieces of their own, etc. | | That said, first move advantage does seem strong still due to | how forcing a queen can be. An example would be 1.e4..e5 | 2.Qh5..d5 3.Qxf7# | yosefk wrote: | The best way to find out the best strategy for Human Chess is | to train AlphaZero to play it, and learn from its example. | Then we can make a Human Human Chess variant where you lose | the game by playing the top move suggested by this newly | trained engine. | | It is an interesting theoretical question whether we can have | Aleph Zero Human Chess where Human(Human(...(Chess))) is | applied infinitely, approaching Aleph Zero trainings of | AlphaZero, or we get a redundant variant after some | application where further application of Human() no longer | produces a new variant. | HWR_14 wrote: | But mating is always the optimal engine move. So I'm not sure a | huge material advantage is the advantage you think it is. | AstralStorm wrote: | You will need to find a mate where there are two | possibilities to win. Unplayable for humans, funny for | engines. | | In fact, the opponent cannot play the best move to escape a | mate, so a bunch of the games would become forced surrenders. | HWR_14 wrote: | If there are two moves that mate, they are both considered | optimal engine moves. | gizmore wrote: | My intuition would be checking every move and disallow those | (no claiming, transparent comparison on every move) | | We can argue if a forced move ends the game, or just allows it. | | This would (more) move the game forwards in the basic | historical rule-set. | | - giz | phonebucket wrote: | I like this strategy, but I don't think it's necessarily clear | cut: while taking the queen is forbidden, the opponent also has | the opportunity of putting their queen en prise. | | So you end up in this scenario where both players are taking | one another's pieces while leaving their queens en prise the | whole time. Is it a draw, or is there some clever way to break | this loop? | Configure0251 wrote: | Hey, could someone please explain this for my friend? They don't | get it. | curiousssnake wrote: | "" If the chess engine suggests the opponent's move, the claimant | wins the game. If not, their opponent wins instead. "" | | How? Top engine move changes with evaluation time. Longer the | wait, better the move. | nicoburns wrote: | > Top engine move changes with evaluation time | | I think that's like saying you can't play scrabble because the | dictionary changes over time. You specify the engine and wait | time before you start a game. | danuker wrote: | You can't. You have to share the best move ahead of each | move. | | Waiting for a specific duraion may yield different results | depending on CPU usage or other variables. | scott_s wrote: | Players only reference the engine to resolve a claim, after | the move has been played. | danuker wrote: | Ah. So part of the fun is not knowing which move is | forbidden, ahead of time. | scott_s wrote: | Yes. You also have to be good enough to be able to guess | what is most likely to best the best engine move. | bmacho wrote: | No, there are no top engine moves in practice, and in theory. | WJW wrote: | Only in the general case, for simple (mostly endgame) | positions it is quite possible to exhaustively search the | move tree and find the absolute best move. Those can be | found by current engines and future engine development | won't change them anymore. Such a move would therefore | always be the top engine move. | kadoban wrote: | You can make the engine choice deterministic just by choosing | an evaluation time and settings. | irishsultan wrote: | not quite deterministic when you consider multithreading and | monte carlo search. | kadoban wrote: | Yeah, deterministic is not actually the concept I want here | I think. It's fine if it's random, it just needs to be | unambiguous. | | So you just choose in advance what settings to run with and | the stopping condition. And then it doesn't matter that if | you had run it with different settings, you may have gotten | a different answer. | rocqua wrote: | It is less fun if the outcome is non-deterministic. It | means that occasionally the win is determined randomly. | That takes away a certain element of skill. | kadoban wrote: | I guess if you let it run for a long time it should | converge on a first move? | | I don't think there's a real fix for the issue, unless | someone effectively solves chess someday. Otherwise your | win/loss is fundamentally based on the imperfect | evaluation of a particular engine. | | If it's really just the nondeterminism that bothers you | (which is fair enough, preferences vary), there's engines | that either are deterministic or can be made so with | settings. | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: | This is not necessarily true. Sometimes there are emultiple | best moves, and in this case the order might be arbitrary | depending on all sorts of hard to control things like thread | interleavings and caching effects which can be affected even | by other processes on the system. You could run it single | threaded with no transposition table, but then you have a | pretty shitty engine because modern engines are fundamentally | designed around having a transposition table. Then you get | situations where the top engine move might actually be a bad | move. | ht85 wrote: | That wouldn't work as the speed at which the engine runs is | not deterministic. | | Engines can be configured to limit search to a certain depth, | which will produce a result after every branch has reached | the limit or been pruned. That process will vary in time but | be deterministic. | | Recent neural based engines tend to not be deterministic, | especially if ran multi-threaded. | rrobukef wrote: | Where time is measured in the number of positions evaluated. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | So the only way to win in the end-game is to set up for a | position where the are _two_ possible moves to mate? There would | never be any practical reason to resign I don 't think. | ixtenu wrote: | TFA: | | > Checkmating loses the game, as it is always the top engine | move. Rather than aiming for checkmate, players seek to force | their opponent to make a top engine move. If a player only has | one move available, that move will always be the top engine | move, which loses the game. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | Yikes; did not read that carefully enough. | jll29 wrote: | An interesting variant of chess; Alan Turing is said to have | introduced another, outdoors version of chess where you'd move, | then run around the house, and if the opponent hasn't moved by | the time you're back, you'd get to move a second time. That | change of rules ought to push Turing's variant somewhat outside | the tree of possibilities of traditional chess. | Waterluvian wrote: | Okay I love where this goes if explored a bit. Imagine "Shitty | Chess" where you can't play the top 10 moves (or if fewer are | available, you must pick the worst option). | | I feel like this would be a funny novelty for a YouTube video. | Maybe we can get some YouTube grand-masters like Nakamura to | tolerate a few games for the schadenfreude. | manor wrote: | The instructions should be clearer as to whether the engine is | visible at all times or only accessed in the case of a challenge. | Seems like it would be a hassle to do this except in a mode where | the engine is visible at all times... | darkstar999 wrote: | Seems pretty clear to me. | | > Starting from move 2, players can claim their opponent's last | move was a top engine move. This immediately ends the game. | | > Claims are settled by asking the chess engine to evaluate the | position before the contested move. If the chess engine | suggests the opponent's move, the claimant wins the game. If | not, their opponent wins instead. | | So your suggestion would be a completely different game. | nathanvanfleet wrote: | There is nothing more human than having to imagine the procedures | and operations of a machine at all times. | vanderZwan wrote: | I think this would also be fun to try with Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe, | which also has the advantage of being _much_ faster to resolve | with AI than taking a minute. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_tic-tac-toe | klyrs wrote: | Checkmate is forbidden because it's what the engine suggests. | Check with a single escape is suddenly the goal. | | But if you're in check, do the rules say you need to try to | escape it? Or can you take the opportunity to capture the queen, | thumbing your nose at the false threat? | electrotype wrote: | You can actually checkmate if there are two ways to do it and | one is uglier. | rnestler wrote: | Not really, read the fine print :) | | > When multiple moves have the top score, they are all top | moves, even if visual markers (like move arrows) suggest the | engine prefers one over the other. | | This would be the case for two check mates. | bena wrote: | The goal of the game is to capture the opposing player's King. | Technically, you don't have to escape a check. But the other | player can take your King and you'd lose. That's why checkmate | is seen as a win, because on the player's next turn he can take | the opponent's King and there's nothing the opponent can do | about it. | | In rapid chess, if you overlook check or put your own King in | check, your opponent can claim the win. | | Now, what happens in Human Chess, I don't know. Because I would | assume that the best move would be to capture the King and win | the game. Assuming that you can't capture the King because it's | the recommended move, this does seem like something you could | exploit to some degree. | jetnew wrote: | If we train recursively-restricted reinforcement learning agents, | could there be interesting differences in the behaviors that | emerge? Could it even be used as a method for exploration? | | Some set-up considerations: 1) Actions must be discrete, or at | least binned for restriction, 2) The number of times to restrict | is limited by the size of the action space | | I would imagine for CartPole, the balancing would become more | wobbly, while still somewhat successfully balancing. But in more | complicated environments, it could result in much more different | behaviors because the states visited (and trajectories) could be | different. | paulsutter wrote: | Machines would have an even greater advantage here. They know | exactly the second best move, and would easily calculate it based | on any set of constraints. Humans are worse at the increased | complexity | OJFord wrote: | But then they'd just always play second best until they at best | drew, or (more likely) meet with a forced move that's | inherently the best engine move and lose. | | You need a different engine that's focussed on not only | avoiding conventionally top moves itself, but also forcing its | opponent into them. | oehpr wrote: | The catch here is that the engine doesn't understand the | objective in its search. To the engine, getting the king in | check with an obvious response is no issue, in human chess its | game over. | | My bet (uninformed, very novice at chess) is that it's likely | there's guaranteed setups that would always catch an engine. | layman51 wrote: | It seems like it would be fun to watch people play this. What | would happen if one player cheated by using the same engine that | was selected at the start and consistently picked the second, | third, fourth, or fifth engine move? I don't think that would | work out for them because the game incentivizes you to win by | forcing your opponent to take a high-level piece like your queen | to win and then calling them out for being forced to have used | the top engine move, right? | Tepix wrote: | There is a variant of chess where you place a chicken after your | move to an empty field of your choice and the opponent is not | allowed to play there. | | Once the opponent has made her move, she can place the chicken on | any other empty field. | xg15 wrote: | > _If a player only has one move available, that move will always | be the top engine move, which loses the game._ | | It's interesting that this brings another degree of indirection | to victory conditions. | | If you never played chess before, you'd assume the goal is to | take the opponent's king. But as we know, making a move that | would allow your opponent to take the king is forbidden, so the | goal of normal chess is force your opponent into a position where | you _could_ take the king next turn (checkmate). | | This variant takes this another step further: Now any move which | could result in checkmate (or check with only one exit) is | forbidden, and the goal is to force the opponent in a position | where any next move would result in checkmate or check. | vaidhy wrote: | So, everyone has to play to lose and who loses first wins? If I | leave my king open to checkmate, the best move from AI would be | to take that.. but the opponent cannot do that. So, I get to | leave my key pieces open and the opponent tries to do the same?? | tromp wrote: | A simpler variation, that needs no computer to settle disputes, | is Veto Chess. | | In Veto Chess you get one chance per game to veto your opponent's | last move, and force them to make a different one. | | This shares with Human Chess the property that you can win by | checking the king such that the response is forced. | | It may also serve as a handicap system in games between players | of widely different strength, where only the weaker player gets | the veto. | jl6 wrote: | I expect that if I were offered a veto against a stronger | player, I would not be skilled enough to spot which move to | veto, and would probably end up hoarding my veto, like in video | games where you have a great-but-rare ability that you keep | perpetually in reserve. | | ("Too Awesome to Use" on TV Tropes. Link omitted - you're | welcome). | | But then, I'm a terrible chess player. | OJFord wrote: | I'm also terrible; I'd use it when I inadvertently gave my | queen away. | mattmaroon wrote: | Nah, you'd spot one pretty fast when you blundered and they | went to take advantage of it. Instead you'd more likely have | the opposite problem where you'd veto after a blunder but | still be at such a huge disadvantage that it wouldn't matter | much. | | It would be pretty neat between players of similar skill | level though, then I could see the hoarding taking place. | jl6 wrote: | True, and I can see some fun mind-games where a player | might try baiting an opponent into wasting their veto on an | apparently-strong move, or by intentionally playing a | weaker move that still somehow looks strong but actually | masks a now-unvetoable killer move... | tromp wrote: | But it's better than in the video game, since the mere threat | of a veto restricts your opponent at every move. | | As the saying goes, "the threat is stronger than the | execution". | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: | I think if this was played at a GM level, games would be | dreadfully boring, for one simple reason: the first player that | ever allows a winning threat with only one defence, will lose | the game. | | This will lead to extremely cagey games where no one ever dares | make the game sharp and imbalanced. | aidenn0 wrote: | Is it stalemate or a loss if an opponent vetos your only legal | move? | tromp wrote: | A loss if you're in check; a stalemate otherwise. I.e. same | as if that move was considered illegal. | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | Ok, I take your protected queen with my queen and veto you | taking mine on next move. | taneq wrote: | <record scratch> | | <Zach Braff voice> How did we get here? | vanderZwan wrote: | I wonder how well this generalizes to other abstract strategy | games like go or checkers. | Y_Y wrote: | Is there a known family of "functors" for games like this, | e.g. veto or having one opportunity to swap positions with | your opponent etc.? It would be cool to see what you could | say about the rule modification in a general sense before | applying to a particular game. | spindle wrote: | There is some literature on this, yes. I don't know quite | how general it gets. | | See for example several books by Elwyn Berlekamp. | | One outcome of this work was Berlekamp (IIRC) solving a | small class of endgame problem that has eluded professional | (full-time) go players for literally hundreds of years. | tantalor wrote: | Next up: Basilisk Chess | | Two players compete to win a chess game, where you only win if | you work tirelessly to play perfect chess moves on every turn (as | determined by benevolent artificial superintelligence). The loser | is tortured in a virtual reality simulation. | 323 wrote: | But if you are playing Basilisk Chess it means you are aware of | the Basilisk. | | So both players need to stop playing immediately after the | first move and start working towards making strong AI happen, | or they will be VR tortured forever. | taneq wrote: | What? No, Basilisk Chess is where two players compete to make | the chess move that optimizes some future AI's utility | function. If you lose you get tortured forever. | robervin wrote: | If I refuse to play am I also tortured | tantalor wrote: | Try not to think about it. | taneq wrote: | I think that's kinda the default. It sounds really bad until | you realise it's also the default in Darwinian evolution, | which, hi. | nottorp wrote: | Is it human chess if you have to think like an engine to know | what not to do? | pashabitz wrote: | LOL I read this title as a "Showerthoughts", just stating a funny | fact about "normal" chess. | c7b wrote: | Sounds fun, I guess you'll need to be both a strong chess player | already _and_ turn everything you know about chess on its head. | luciusdomitius wrote: | This will definitely have unintended consequences - once you know | that your opponent cannot make the top move, you would start | abusing it. It might be fun though - I am recently playing | Fischer's chess on lichess.org and it is crazy - you beat a 2200+ | player and lose against 945 the very next game. A lot of fun | though. | lesiki wrote: | Now: Human Chess: a variant where you can't play what AI would | play. | | Next: AI that can play Human Chess. | | After: Human^2 Chess: you can't play what the AI above would | play. | | etc | | I wonder if this creates distinctly new games at each level, or | if it's just nonsense one level down. | chronial wrote: | Wouldn't the perfect AI for Human^2 Chess be just the original | AI you started with? | coolness wrote: | I loved the idea, but on further thought, the AI has a huge | advantage in knowing what the engine move is, so they can never | lose to incorrectly calling the last move and engine move. | mattmaroon wrote: | Unless it was two different engines. | vanderZwan wrote: | Are we reinventing GANs for chess engines here, or does it | just happen to sound kinda similar? | ccozan wrote: | I'd say let's go straight to SD and let AI _paint_ the | next move! | hoosieree wrote: | Never go in against a Sicillian! | bad_alloc wrote: | The lowest level might finally make the Bongcloud opening | viable: | | https://www.chess.com/blog/AcceleratedPog/bongcloud-opening-... | tda wrote: | rinse and repeat that a few times, and the only remaining | winning move will be not to play | hcrisp wrote: | Let's call it Human Tic Tac Toe | kelahcim wrote: | The masterpiece of the reference ;) | trsohmers wrote: | Would you like to play a nice game of Global Thermonuclear | War? | xanathar wrote: | This kind of thinking can either lead to total insanity or to | the discovery of the halting problem or Cantor's diagonal | argument. | MichaelDickens wrote: | Wouldn't human^2 chess be similar to regular chess? The human- | chess AI is guaranteed never to play the regular-chess optimal | move, so you can get a checkmate by always playing the optimal | move (according to the engine). And unlike human chess, there's | nothing preventing you from checkmating your opponent. | | (I believe a chess engine could play human^2 chess exactly like | it plays regular chess. A human couldn't because a human | doesn't know what moves the chess engine would pick.) | a1369209993 wrote: | Presumably human^2 chess would prohibit _both_ the top engine | move from human^1 chess _and_ the top engine move from | human^0 chess. That is, it 's human^1 chess with the added | restriction of not playing top engine moves. | [deleted] | hoosieree wrote: | Each level also has a logarithmically increasing number of | "fantasy" meta games stacked on top, don't forget to take those | into account: https://alexshroyer.com/posts/2022-04-30-Fantasy- | Fantasy-Foo... | beardyw wrote: | I would prepare with terrible openings where I have studied the | engine responses. | ansible wrote: | Rather than play something like this, there are many chess | variants that people could try instead. Like Hexagonal Chess [1]. | No one has written engines for them or otherwise invested huge | amounts of time and effort in research. So you can be reasonably | certain that your opponent isn't using an engine to score a cheap | win against you. | | [1] https://greenchess.net/variants.php?cat=6 | iepathos wrote: | Hilarious satire of the whole magnus/niemann debacle! Thank you | for this, made my day. | esparrohack wrote: | I haven't played chess seriously since I was in high school but I | do like collecting hardwood chess boards cus they look great as | room decor. | | I give them out as gifts too. Everyone loves a chess set. | bopjesvla wrote: | Despite the name, this variant is absolutely mind-bending and | games look nothing like regular chess. Have fun trying this out! | tomxor wrote: | Interesting to think how you would go about defeating this. | | Even though you could modify an engine to evaluate each of it's | moves against the selected "top engine" move to avoid them, there | is no clear route to success since there's going to be a lot of | overlap between human and computer for more obvious moves... So | you'd need some kind of tunable difficulty threshold above which | it avoids the best solution. | | Even then, your difficulty setting is a gamble on whether your | opponent will call your bluff. | | In the opposite case, because of the same overlap, false | positives are going to be a combination of frustrating and | flattering. | | I find this is the case in most of the online FPS I have played, | the knowledge that cheating is possible combined with the | disbelief of the ceiling on human ability makes a huge number of | people think you are cheating even if your ability is merely | above average. There are also confusing overlaps between cheating | behaviour and pros on FPS when trying to evaluate replays e.g | wallhackers (especially pro wallhackers) and pros sometimes look | very similar, because the pros are attempting to track through | the walls in their mind... if they get lucky, a replay makes them | look super suspicious and hard to distinguish in a single case. | There are going to be a ton of games like this where the cheating | behaviour are close or identical to the top pros. | mabbo wrote: | I think the 'challenge and win' concept is too strict. | | Just make the move disallowed. You'll need the computer to be | paying attention at all times, but nonetheless it would be more | enjoyable to play. | luxuryballs wrote: | True you could have a ghost piece of the computers move and you | just can't move there. | bentcorner wrote: | I'm not a chess player but wouldn't that give too much | information away? Not knowing what is the "best" move is part | of the game, isn't it? | cortesoft wrote: | This is a completely different game than regular chess, so | I don't know if it is part of the game or not. | jonnybarnes wrote: | How does the game end? | | Anytime you can checkmate is going to be the computer's | recommended move. | hacym wrote: | The game would never end, then. The win condition is | challenging when a move is the best move. It's similar to games | of deception. You WANT the person to think you made the best | move without actually making it, because if they challenge and | are wrong, you win. | hyperhopper wrote: | Why wouldn't the game end? | OJFord wrote: | Because you win by your opponent making the top move (and | you correctly calling it). | | But I assume the top-level commenter meant make winning | exactly like conventional chess - just neither party can | use the top moves to get there. You could even start from | move 1 instead of 2 too, take the best openings off the | table. | somehnacct3757 wrote: | This could be fun for spectators streaming the match at home, who | could see the top engine move in real time while the players are | considering their next move | nraynaud wrote: | Is there a standard evaluation function in chess engines? | luciusdomitius wrote: | I don't think so, but it is deterministic and given equal depth | all search-based engines should theoritically pop the same one. | The AI-based (e.g. AlphaZero) ones are obviously different. | nnoitra wrote: | Hoover889 wrote: | How does this work for forced moves? If there is only one | possible response to a move that move must be the top engine | move. | [deleted] | jonnybarnes wrote: | Yes, forcing your opponent into a situation where there is only | one valid move means you win. | | When they make the move you claim that's the top engine move, | and you'd be correct. | why-el wrote: | It's covered: | | > If a player only has one move available, that move will | always be the top engine move, which loses the game. | [deleted] | aaron695 wrote: | badcppdev wrote: | Another chess variant to make you think: | https://www.chess.com/terms/duck-chess | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: | What about positions where there are multiple moves that are | indistinguishable to the engine? The order in this case is | somewhat arbitrary and might change randomly each time you run | the engine depending on which engine it is. | EGreg wrote: | Oh great. Now let's make a chess engine to solve this game and | then we'll be playing the Human Human chess, and so on! | hateful wrote: | When I read the title, I assumed it would show you the top move | and that move would be blocked. But instead it lets you do | whatever move you want and then you lose if you happen to chose | the same one. Interesting. | charlieyu1 wrote: | I'd say an interesting variant would be regular chess with Swap2 | rule from gomoku. Which is basically the first player makes the | first few moves for both sides, and the other player can decide | to swap black and white. | WJW wrote: | That actually looks hilarious, especially the part where | checkmating is illegal since it would always be the best move. | The first game highlighted is also fun. I'll have to try this | next week at the chess club! | misja111 wrote: | With this variant you can win without checkmating: just | checking with leaving only 1 forced move is enough to win the | game. | CarVac wrote: | As long as putting the king in check isn't optimal... | Dr_Birdbrain wrote: | Right, so your check should be in a context where another | move was mate in 1 | thejteam wrote: | Should that always be the case, though? We could try to force a | position where 2 separate moves checkmate. Then only 1 | (presumably the one that results from capturing the highest | valued piece?) would be the engine result. | underdeserver wrote: | This is explicitly addressed: When multiple | moves have the top score, they are all top moves, | robertlagrant wrote: | I wonder if a move that checkmates is scored lower than a | move that checkmates and captures. | _dain_ wrote: | Checkmate .. with advantage! | ht85 wrote: | Forced mates are generally scored with the number of | moves to mate, e.g. "M2" | rocqua wrote: | So you can start down a sequence that gives check-mate, | but once it is the shortest sequence to check-mate, you | have to abandon the check-mate. | Scarblac wrote: | So you can never actually play a mate in one. | klodolph wrote: | If you can check your opponent, giving them only one legal | move, you win (because it is the top engine move). | hacym wrote: | This is a good point. If you can check with your queen but | hang it, the "best move" would be to take it. Make it so | they have to take it, for example in a back rank, and you | win. | kadoban wrote: | Aren't there situations where 2+ moves cause checkmate? Only | one can be the top engine move. Or are all of those effectively | impossible to reach unless your opponent helps? | faheel wrote: | It says at the bottom: | | > When multiple moves have the top score, they are all top | moves, even if visual markers (like move arrows) suggest the | engine prefers one over the other. | | Since all moves that checkmate the opponent will have the | same score (M1 or -M1) they'll all be illegal. | rendaw wrote: | Also despite being named Human chess it's a form of chess where | a computer is absolutely necessary. | daniel-s wrote: | Stockfish variant that always plays the 2nd best move. | planede wrote: | That's only the best strategy, if your opponent can make any | chess move. | benj111 wrote: | So what if you make a engine that plays this.... | | That's making my head hurt. | jawadch93 wrote: | bertil wrote: | There are a lot of examples here of where that would fail | (openings, checks). Would it make sense to introduce rules like | letting people pick any move they want for the first three turns, | or allowing any checking move and counter-checking move? Or is | that one of those situation where trying to fix an obvious | problem lead to move issues with defining the problem clearly? | davidw wrote: | I immediately thought of Marostica, but I guess this is easier | than travelling to northern Italy | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marostica#History | eyko wrote: | The second move is too early. | | I've played and lost enough games against engines that I would | say I've learnt some of the "best moves" (as suggested by the | engine, when analysing why I lost) in almost every "usual" | scenario for my "usual" openings all the way to maybe the fourth | move. There are a lot of variations, but even past the fourth | move I still remember some engine suggestions based on my own | errors. | BurningFrog wrote: | I've been thinking about a possible chess variant to eliminate | opening preparation drudgery. | | The Fisher 960 variant tries to do this, but it can be very | different from regular chess, and some of the positions are | unbalanced. | | I think we can use the fact that engines _know_ when a position | is even. There must be millions of even positions in the first 10 | or so moves. Pick one of those randomly, and start the game. | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: | I think in the context of top level chess, eliminating opening | prep is the wrong way to go. And I don't like 960 either for | that reason. I think the problem with opening prep today is | that there are so many drawish openings and forced draws, | constructed repetitions etc. In other words it's just too easy | for top players to make a low effort draw. | | To make top level chess more interesting I have a handful of | ideas that work in tandem. | | 1. Change the scoring and rating systems so that a win is worth | more than two draws. E.g a win is 3 points for the winner, draw | is 1 point to each player. Game theoretically this should | favour players that play for a win and avoid easy draws. But | also modifying the rating system is crucial, otherwise we'll | get the same drawmeisters dominating the rating list. | | 2. Change the repetition rule to be similar to xiangqi(Chinese | chess) where repetitions are illegal and don't lead to a draw. | This eliminates most of the lowest effort draws right out of | the gate. | | 3. Make the game sharper and more complex. The easiest way to | do this is just to remove the concept of castling altogether. | Former world champion Kramnik has advocated this, and computer | analyses of the ruleset is promising. King safety is suddenly a | hard problem to solve in most openings and the game becomes | much, much sharper. | | 4(optional). add more pieces. The best way is Seirawan-chess, a | modification of Capablanca chess that adds a knight- | bishop(hawk) and knight-rook(elephant) without changing the | board geometry and starting position. | BurningFrog wrote: | About point 1, soccer/football did that a few decades ago, it | was successful and is now uncontroversial: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_points_for_a_win | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: | Yeah, there are chess tournaments that do this now, like | Norway Chess. But because a single tournament can't change | the FIDE rating system, it's sort of a fart in the wind. | | Norway chess also has the spectaculary stupid idea that if | a game is drawn, the players play an armageddon(white gets | more time, black wins with a draw) blitz game, and the | winner gets half a point extra, so 1.5 to 1. This just | ruins it to me. A draw should still be a draw, sometimes | the players were just equal and not all draws are lazy. And | this makes drawing more attractive again because if you win | the armageddon you still get half a victory worth of | points. And decided by a blitz game in a classical | tournament. | rtkwe wrote: | I would wonder if you need to add an 'ease of play' | consideration to how even the positions are. Positions may be | technically even but the play for one side could be more | complicated to see your way through. | alexb_ wrote: | I remember someone on /r/chess actually evaluated every single | starting position in Fischer Chess. This was the most balanced | position: https://preview.redd.it/4o4kfv2kfcw91.png | | Bishop, Rook, Knight, King, Knight, Rook, Queen, Bishop. Here's | the post: | https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/yeregq/fischer_rando... | | Maybe this should be used as the starting point? Traditional | openings would usually give an advantage to White. | fernandopj wrote: | This is already how some engines tournaments work. They don't | start from move zero, they start from some uncommon position | after a few moves, but one still considered even or at least | not unbalanced. | nextaccountic wrote: | The position doesn't need to be even though, just play twice, | one with white and one with black | knubie wrote: | I dont follow the chess world that closely, but could someone | explain why chess960 isn't more popular? Its been around for | awhile and solves the problem of people memorizing opening lines, | and boring chess games where the first n moves are predetermined. | 3pt14159 wrote: | It may solve opening lines, but it doesn't really solve the | general concept of mass memorization. After a few moves more | than 960 possible configurations of chess exist from a normal | board anyway. | | And you can say, "oh well but the boards are roughly the same" | and that's sort of true, but it doesn't really solve the | problem of the people memorizing the tree. It just changes the | shape of the tree. It goes from looking like a pine to a maple. | hyperhopper wrote: | Disagree. | | If you make the the 960 times as wide, people will only be | able to memorize 1/960th as deep. | | So not much at all. | 3pt14159 wrote: | That's not true. | | In three plies (one sided moves) of chess, there are over | eight thousand possible games. By making the game 960 times | as wide before you start you're not meaningfully changing | the impact of memorization on the outcome of the game. | You're just changing how deep you memorize the various | trees. | | You can say, "well then, mission accomplished!" but the | reality is that most of the tree memorization goes pretty | deep at the highest levels before a new game is found | because you're in effect following the games before it or | you're blundering, or, at best, gambling if you've found | something kinda unexpected and interesting. | | Put another way, any given top rated chess player has a | finite set of possible game memorizations. Introducing a | mere 960 new configurations at move 0 is only trading 2 to | 4 plies worth of depth to the game. It's more complicated | than that, because board positions can be essentially | forced and board positions can overlap between pre- | configurations, etc. But that's the essence of my argument. | | You're not meaningfully changing the impact of memorization | on the outcome of the game, even if one thousandth sounds | like a lot, it isn't really when dealing with permutations. | mrandish wrote: | Obligatory reference post to Fischer Random Chess (aka Chess960). | A variant designed to "make gaining an advantage through the | memorization of openings impracticable; players instead must rely | more on their skill and creativity over the board." A combination | of Human Chess and Chess960 might be interesting... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess#Praising_... | buzzdenver wrote: | I would assume that this is a tongue-in-cheek suggestion; a | commentary on the state of chess in 2022. Otherwise it makes zero | sense, because what you're doing is using the rules of one game, | Real Chess, to determine what moves are allowed in a completely | different one, Human Chess, in a way that is very complicated and | awkward. How would the top engine move be defined in an endgame | where you have few enough pieces to use a table-base? Is any move | that leads to a win a top-move? Or just the one that does so the | quickest? Madness :) | shkkmo wrote: | This seems like a misnomer of a name. "Human Chess", a variant of | chess that can only be played if you have a computer... | vanderZwan wrote: | I think it is a joke on the accusations among professional | chess players that some players cheat by using a chess engine | to determine their next move. In other words: claiming the move | of your opponent is the top engine move is equivalent to | accusing them of "cheating". | xeyownt wrote: | Yes, but this new rule also adds interesting new mechanisms, | like for instance the kamikaze check move with the queen, | where the opponent's only move is to take with the king, | hence losing the game (as it is also engine top move). | | Mastering that kind of new threats does not seem easy IMO, | and in fact could well be mastered by... computers ;-) | vanderZwan wrote: | Agreed! | | I've heard it said that the best parodies are almost as | good as the things they parody (and a sign that the | comedians in question both love and understand the thing | they are making a parody of). It could be argued that this | chess variant is a really good "parody" in that sense, but | encoded in the rules of the game itself. | 10xDev wrote: | Chess variants: Chess but worse. | kstenerud wrote: | So basically chess with landmines. Every move will be contested | (because why wouldn't you? there are no downsides and only | upsides) | | So every move you make (I'll be watching you) could end up being | the top move. Even if you run the chess engine yourself to decide | what _not_ to play, you 're still at risk of bad luck because you | happen to run the chess engine on a faster or slower machine than | the person checking for the top move, and they diverge. | | EDIT: Never mind, contesting and getting it wrong causes you to | lose - that's the downside. | vanderZwan wrote: | If you contest a move and you're wrong you lose the game. | kstenerud wrote: | Ah I misread that part. | Khoth wrote: | There is a downside - if you contest and you're wrong, you | lose. | | The page doesn't say, but it's cheating to use an engine | yourself to decide what move to make (or to decide whether to | contest) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-01 23:00 UTC)