Play a slight variant of chess for computer resistance
Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2016 10:23 pm
Hi, I'm a new member and I joined because this site seems to have lasted many years and to have a dedicated membership. Given that, I'd like to see if the site admin, and any number of members, would be interested in having this site developed to allow playing of a variant I've found out about that cannot be played by computer engines.
Of course, most variants can't be played by computer engines. This one however looks and feels so much like chess that it almost seems to be a natural extension of chess. I know the inventor and he did post an article on chessbase.com about it (apparently he was invited by Frederik Friedel of chessbase to post the article). This happened in early 2014. The inventor hasn't had time to promote it, but I am so taken by it that I want to see if a site like this that plays only correspondence would have any interest.
The basic rule changes are this: the first 16 moves of the game (8 moves by White, 8 moves by Black) are normal chess rules. Thus all chess openings are played as normal up to the 16th ply inclusive. After that, each player has 12 chances to play an "option" on his or her move. An option is simply a play of 2 moves, with certain restrictions (1st move cannot give check or capture, if a single piece is moved twice it cannot capture on the 2nd move either, but the 2nd move can give check).
The key thing is that you have to judge when it is best to use your 12 options, and when it is better to pass and just do a single normal chess move. Saving options for the endgame makes them more powerful, but if you try and save them all, you could get swamped in the middlegame.
After Black's 32nd move, each player gets 4 more options. This helps to ensure that options are available in the endgame.
That is basically it, although there are a few other minor points, including a very neat "en passant" rule when a player moves a single piece twice in an option play. I can send the admin or anyone else here a complete document of the rules, and it also describes how a game is annotated. And I have a copy of a Word document of 2 annotated games that the inventor played against a 1700 level player that I can also provide to anyone here.
Any programmer who writes computer chess engines will have great trouble writing a strong engine for this variant. That's because of 2 things: first, the search tree grows exponentially, and second, there is no good algorithm for an engine to figure out whether to use or to save options in a specific situation. Humans have greater intuition for these kind of decisions.
The site developers would have to write new code to handle allowing the playing of options and saving of games in a slightly modified pgn format (basically, a move where an option is played has the moves separated by a comma, i.e. 9.Ne4,f4 means White played Knight to e4 and pawn to f4).
This site could go down in history as being the first place where players could play Option Chess online. I'd be willing to play any number of games against any number of opponents. The play is very challenging, some of the lines of analysis in the annotated games I mentioned will floor you!
Since everyone here obviously loves to analyze chess, and Option Chess is really just extended chess (no fairy pieces with weird moves, no larger board), this site seems ideal to make history with Option Chess. Thanks for reading, cheers!
Of course, most variants can't be played by computer engines. This one however looks and feels so much like chess that it almost seems to be a natural extension of chess. I know the inventor and he did post an article on chessbase.com about it (apparently he was invited by Frederik Friedel of chessbase to post the article). This happened in early 2014. The inventor hasn't had time to promote it, but I am so taken by it that I want to see if a site like this that plays only correspondence would have any interest.
The basic rule changes are this: the first 16 moves of the game (8 moves by White, 8 moves by Black) are normal chess rules. Thus all chess openings are played as normal up to the 16th ply inclusive. After that, each player has 12 chances to play an "option" on his or her move. An option is simply a play of 2 moves, with certain restrictions (1st move cannot give check or capture, if a single piece is moved twice it cannot capture on the 2nd move either, but the 2nd move can give check).
The key thing is that you have to judge when it is best to use your 12 options, and when it is better to pass and just do a single normal chess move. Saving options for the endgame makes them more powerful, but if you try and save them all, you could get swamped in the middlegame.
After Black's 32nd move, each player gets 4 more options. This helps to ensure that options are available in the endgame.
That is basically it, although there are a few other minor points, including a very neat "en passant" rule when a player moves a single piece twice in an option play. I can send the admin or anyone else here a complete document of the rules, and it also describes how a game is annotated. And I have a copy of a Word document of 2 annotated games that the inventor played against a 1700 level player that I can also provide to anyone here.
Any programmer who writes computer chess engines will have great trouble writing a strong engine for this variant. That's because of 2 things: first, the search tree grows exponentially, and second, there is no good algorithm for an engine to figure out whether to use or to save options in a specific situation. Humans have greater intuition for these kind of decisions.
The site developers would have to write new code to handle allowing the playing of options and saving of games in a slightly modified pgn format (basically, a move where an option is played has the moves separated by a comma, i.e. 9.Ne4,f4 means White played Knight to e4 and pawn to f4).
This site could go down in history as being the first place where players could play Option Chess online. I'd be willing to play any number of games against any number of opponents. The play is very challenging, some of the lines of analysis in the annotated games I mentioned will floor you!
Since everyone here obviously loves to analyze chess, and Option Chess is really just extended chess (no fairy pieces with weird moves, no larger board), this site seems ideal to make history with Option Chess. Thanks for reading, cheers!