Chess

[chrisvenus]

REcently thanks to quisalan and R I have had my interest in chess renewed. I used to play when I was younger and was even in the school chess club (yeah, geek points for that one - I was in the school maths team too). I hadn't really played much for ages though but recently Quis and R have bought a chess seet and playing and I've been watching and occasionally giving advice and occasionally playing. Funnily I'd actually downloaded a chess game from XBox live arcade that I played on a bit last night. I'd forgotten how fun it is. And the xbox one is quite good because it implements chess clocks with 10 minutes each whcih means that your games are rather quick and don't draw out too much. Given how fast computers probably actually decide their next move these days I wonder how they decide how much time the computer is going to take to make its move. and indeed how they do different difficulty levels...

But yeah, a random aside to say I've played some chess recently and its quite fun. That maybe because I keep winning. If I had to think more it might stop being as fun... :)

Comments

[danfossydan.livejournal.com]

Timed 10 min games are very mean against human people I think. Totally different to a game with a longer clock.

I've not played for years, it is great.

[chrisvenus]

In this case 10 minutes wassn't too bad because the computer started off quite well and then it seems when it got a bit hard would just start moving pieces into totally unsupported conditions leaving your cunning plans obsoleted by his queen having taken a pawn that was defended by another pawn or something equally ridiculous. I have only got the trial version and I think the opponent skill level will improve. You can also change the time you have though that's alright.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Cowley Workers always need new players... The season starts in late Autumn so you've got plenty of time. There's a larger Cowley club in Rose Hill, but it's quite strongly focused on the juniors. Also, if you're going to be in the middle of nowhere soon the City club meets near Port Meadow. But Cowley Workers, previously Morris Motors, was my club for a season, and much better for having a laugh and a drink as well as just playing some chess. Plays in Division 3 of 4 in the Oxford league.

Go on, it's fun.

[chrisvenus]

I dont' think I have the time or inclination to get into chess at that kind of level again (and by that kind of level I mean in competitions and such like).

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

You have no idea how useless a large number of their players are. The main problem with matches was how slow the time limits always are. I guess to make an evening of it when it's one play one, that's life. The London Civil Service League is even worszzzzzzz...

[evath.livejournal.com]

This is almost certainly due to most chess systems (basics ones atleast) use a look up table for openings and closings, in the middle they search for a move that will take them to a close by looking as many turns as possible ahead. I believe it is that middle point a that's a sod to program for and infact I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't quite crap on alot of games due to the fact most people arn't world champions.

Normally the higher level effects how far into the future the game will look. Though with the horse power of an Xbox and me thinking back to the 386 pre co-processor era I don't know how relivent what I've said is.

[chrisvenus]

Yeah, I remember chess games on the BBC, well, one in particular, white knight I think it was called, would list on screen what it was thinking about. That used to get a fair few moves ahead...

The fact is that nowadays I expect that the 10 seconds the computer takes to make a move can probably be used to plan about half a dozen moves ahead and that the amount of moves it needs to look ahead to find out what happens when you take a defended pawn with your queen is about one.

It doesn't do stupid things because it is not looking far enough ahead, it is doing stupid things because it is on a very low skill level. For what its worth achievements suggest skill levels of up to about 1200 and the ones you get to play in the demo seem to be up to about 60 I think.

Adn you are almost certainly right about openings though I am less convinced that it would be easy to do closing by a lookup table unless you are talking about the real closing stage of things like "king and queen vs king". Fact is the end game when one person has three pawns a bishop and a king and the opponent has two pawns a knight and a king I am not sure can be done by lookup really.

[chrisvenus]

Yeah, its more the time input that I can't be bothered with. I am not fussed about putting over an evening a week (or whatever it might be) to play one game of chess.

[evath.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess

might be of interest. In particular the bit on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame_tablebase

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Heh - earlier today I was complaining at the Escapist's assumption that chess was a good game and explaining why it wasn't. Should I link the thread so's you can go and argue with me? ;-)

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

My old boss, who is a big muckety-muck in the world of computer chess, claimed that they had difficulty selling their computer chess software to one particular manufacturer because the guy they dealt with there, while a very keen chess player, was simply very bad and could never beat their software even at its lowest level. So what they did was they went back and added an even weaker level of computer opponent still, which was weaker simply because it just didn't try terribly hard to win. I have a strong suspicion that most levels in most computer chess software programs these days don't necessarily try to make the optimum move.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind seeing it, though you're not going to get much disagreement from these quarters.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

It's comment seven in this thread. There may be something to be said for reading the article first if you have time.

[chrisvenus]

Yeah, my wonder about difficulty levels is if they rank moves in terms of how good they are and then put a probability distribution and randomly choose one, better quality players tending towards the better moves, crapper players tending equally to good and bad kind of thing...

[chrisvenus]

I think most of your points are valid there in some ways. I think some of them are subjective though and some of them (as another poster there said) depend on skill.

First match I had for a while was at blenheim palace on a giant board. MMy opponent made a mistake and took my queen. I should have won at that point (given it wasn't an exchange situation) but about five moves later did something silly and he had my queen. Its not always the case that any mistake is unforgiving, it depends on the skill of the players to take into account. With equal players I'd say that both sides are likely to make equal mistakes. Whoever makes the first mistake is at a disadvantage cos things may well get worse before a balancing mistake gets made (and there may not ever be one) but its not quite as grimmly inevitable as you seem to be implying (I say seem in case I misunderstood).

How many interesting moves are made is also I would have thought very subjective. I would have said I see more than that but I can quite happily call an unexpected move interesting without it necessarily having to be overall good or anything like that (and perhaps with Q and R I see more "interesting" moves due to the relatively low play quality - no offence guys).

I'm also not sure I follow your "random" thing. Is this the same as unknown in technical circles? There is clearly no random element and to my mind not knowing what is goign to happen in five moves time is not the same as random. I suspect I missed a point.

Overall though the pleasure I gain from chess is probably the same sort as I get from doing chess puzzles on their own or sudoku or patience or any of these "puzzle" type things. Chess puzzles are usually fairly simple (things like "mate in one", "avoid mate", "safe capture", etc.) but chess is a combination of all these and more with no one right answer to them. For each position you are solving the puzzle of "Make my position stronger" and each time you do your opponent is solvign the puzzle "Make his position weaker", etc. Its a totally different sort of enjoyment than sitting down and playing dynasty warriors with your mate but I think that just means its not everybody's cup of tea.

In general though I agree with you which is why I don't particular care for going in for tournament play or whatever. My style of chess is to think for a bit and if it seems too complex play from my heart (Yugi style!) and see how it goes from there. If it turns out to be bad then I'll just have to try to make up for it. :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I much prefer chess puzzles to actual chess, because assuming they're remotely well designed there's always something interesting going on. In a real game I'm more likely to think for five minutes and discover there's nothing interesting going on at all.

There is clearly no random element

No, clearly not.

That particular comment is really a response to Jason Rohrer's insistence on no randomness in his single player scenario. The point being that chess contains strategic considerations which are exactly like randomness for every conceivable purpose, so the fact they're not actually random ought to be irrelevant.

For example: in a fiendishly complex midgame position (which, it almost goes without saying, neither player has seen before) my knight is under attack. I determine that to withdraw it would be bad, so I decide to move a pawn to defend it. There are two pawns capable of this task. So, I decide which one to play by considering how the game may evolve from that point. After looking ahead for five or six moves down the relevant lines and at the broader strategic position I am still none the wiser as to which pawn is the better move. I therefore select one based on a general strategic principle: a desire to keep my pieces as centrally positioned as possible.

Did I pick the better pawn? In some absolutely pure theoretical sense this choice was completely in my hands, but to all intents and purposes it was random. I have chosen one of two non-overlapping subsets of the game space and neither I nor my opponent know anything at all about the relative properties of the two. (And if you prefer to think that we do indeed know a small amount about each that doesn't really change the argument.)

This is precisely analogous to a game like Solitaire (the card game). The initial position just places you in a subset of the game space about which you know basically nothing and the rest of the game is spent exploring it.

I think this kind of thing is fine for single player games. It's not really the same kind of mechanic as - for example - rolling a die to see how many spaces you move.

[chrisvenus]

I much prefer chess puzzles to actual chess, because assuming they're remotely well designed there's always something interesting going on. In a real game I'm more likely to think for five minutes and discover there's nothing interesting going on at all.

I suspect I have the problem that usually the chess puzzles I do aren't the ones set from newspapers or whatever but randomly generated ones from a computer that will quite often *not* have anything interesting going on.

And I think I understand your randomness comment a bit more. Its not always the case that it is random though. Sometimes one pawn is clearly going to put you in a better position but I suppose even if you've lose nothing and your opponent only has a knight and king you can still be mated so the fact remains that the pawn leaving you in an obviously better position is not always a better position you are in.

And one pedantic point - aren't the two subsets fo game space actually overlapping to a certain extent? He might choose the same response whcihever pawn you move and if you then mvoe the other one then it doesn't matter which you moved first... Its a point of pedantry but I'm just wondering if there is some analysis of the game on the theoretical level whereby I'm missing something...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Yes, true. And any game of chess can always end with just two kings staring each other down.

I suspect I have the problem that...

Hardly a problem. If you find such puzzles enjoyable then that's great, since you will never be short of puzzly entertainment! (That said, nor am I since discovering nikoli.com.)

[chrisvenus]

I have the problem that I don't enjoy them hugely but I do find them slightly addictive. :)