Hardest chess variant for human

[duncan]

Which chess variants do humans find hardest, leading to mate against humans in less moves than regular chess?

Are there any variants where humans including grand masters make frequent tactical blunders, as the calculations are far too complex for a human, but simple for the computer.



How to Play 4D Chess

https://codeprojects.org/XL22-IlnhXtfp3 ... jJFcx-uHU/

[mvanthoor]

Personally, I find variants very confusing:

- replace bishops by hawks (move from c1 to either e3 or f4, but not to d2, but in many variants can jump over pieces)
- replace knights by unicorns (move 1 forward, 1 diagonal like a knight, but also two forward and one diagonal, or 1 forward and 2 diagonal in some variants)

There are also variants where you have like an extra powerful version of each piece:
- rook => castle
- knight => unicorn
- bishop => hawk or archbishop
- queen => dragon
- pawn (soldier) => corporal / sargent (can move sideways, or can move 2 steps from any rank, that sort of thing)

And then one side can decide to replace a piece (replace one piece, or 3-4 pawns for example), and the other side can replace a different piece (or they can replace no pieces). Then you'll have to know a lot of movements, especially if the extra pieces are unusual. Add things like dropping captured pieces to that, and you quickly get into the unplayable territory because there's just too much to consider.

[lkaufman]

Which chess variants do humans find hardest, leading to mate against humans in less moves than regular chess?

Are there any variants where humans including grand masters make frequent tactical blunders, as the calculations are far too complex for a human, but simple for the computer.



How to Play 4D Chess

https://codeprojects.org/XL22-IlnhXtfp3 ... jJFcx-uHU/

I would expect that CrazyHouse chess would be such a variant, although of course this depends on how much effort goes into making a strong engine. But even the existing modified SF versions should be good enough to crush the best human in fewer moves than in normal chess. Another criterion could be how much handicap the best human needs. In normal chess, knight odds is enough for a top human (except with very short time limit); in Crazyhouse I don't think knight odds would be nearly enough.

[duncan]

Which chess variants do humans find hardest, leading to mate against humans in less moves than regular chess?

Are there any variants where humans including grand masters make frequent tactical blunders, as the calculations are far too complex for a human, but simple for the computer.



How to Play 4D Chess

https://codeprojects.org/XL22-IlnhXtfp3 ... jJFcx-uHU/

I would expect that CrazyHouse chess would be such a variant, although of course this depends on how much effort goes into making a strong engine. But even the existing modified SF versions should be good enough to crush the best human in fewer moves than in normal chess. Another criterion could be how much handicap the best human needs. In normal chess, knight odds is enough for a top human (except with very short time limit); in Crazyhouse I don't think knight odds would be nearly enough.

Do you have an estimate of how big a handicap you would need to defeat a strong CrazyHouse chess, in tournament conditions ?

[towforce]

How to Play 4D Chess

It might be click bait, but in one video, players said that 5D chess was harming their mental health.

Thread link. In that thread, I posted a link to a video of GM Hikaru playing the game (he gave up after about an hour, though would have done better if he'd worked his way through the examples IMO).

[lkaufman]

Which chess variants do humans find hardest, leading to mate against humans in less moves than regular chess?

Are there any variants where humans including grand masters make frequent tactical blunders, as the calculations are far too complex for a human, but simple for the computer.



How to Play 4D Chess

https://codeprojects.org/XL22-IlnhXtfp3 ... jJFcx-uHU/

I would expect that CrazyHouse chess would be such a variant, although of course this depends on how much effort goes into making a strong engine. But even the existing modified SF versions should be good enough to crush the best human in fewer moves than in normal chess. Another criterion could be how much handicap the best human needs. In normal chess, knight odds is enough for a top human (except with very short time limit); in Crazyhouse I don't think knight odds would be nearly enough.

Do you have an estimate of how big a handicap you would need to defeat a strong CrazyHouse chess, in tournament conditions ?

I am not a strong enough CrazyHouse player to answer your question, but in Shogi, the game that presumably inspired CrazyHouse chess with similar drop rules, I need rook plus bishop handicap to beat the strongest engine, and I am still technically the top-ranked American shogi player on the last pre-pandemic Pan-Atlantic rating list (no U.S. events since the Pandemic). Those are the two strongest pieces in shogi!

[duncan]

Which chess variants do humans find hardest, leading to mate against humans in less moves than regular chess?

Are there any variants where humans including grand masters make frequent tactical blunders, as the calculations are far too complex for a human, but simple for the computer.



How to Play 4D Chess

https://codeprojects.org/XL22-IlnhXtfp3 ... jJFcx-uHU/

I would expect that CrazyHouse chess would be such a variant, although of course this depends on how much effort goes into making a strong engine. But even the existing modified SF versions should be good enough to crush the best human in fewer moves than in normal chess. Another criterion could be how much handicap the best human needs. In normal chess, knight odds is enough for a top human (except with very short time limit); in Crazyhouse I don't think knight odds would be nearly enough.

Do you have an estimate of how big a handicap you would need to defeat a strong CrazyHouse chess, in tournament conditions ?

I am not a strong enough CrazyHouse player to answer your question, but in Shogi, the game that presumably inspired CrazyHouse chess with similar drop rules, I need rook plus bishop handicap to beat the strongest engine, and I am still technically the top-ranked American shogi player on the last pre-pandemic Pan-Atlantic rating list (no U.S. events since the Pandemic). Those are the two strongest pieces in shogi!

and do you have an estimate what handicap the world's top shogi player would need to defeat the strongest engine?

[lkaufman]

Which chess variants do humans find hardest, leading to mate against humans in less moves than regular chess?

Are there any variants where humans including grand masters make frequent tactical blunders, as the calculations are far too complex for a human, but simple for the computer.



How to Play 4D Chess

https://codeprojects.org/XL22-IlnhXtfp3 ... jJFcx-uHU/

I would expect that CrazyHouse chess would be such a variant, although of course this depends on how much effort goes into making a strong engine. But even the existing modified SF versions should be good enough to crush the best human in fewer moves than in normal chess. Another criterion could be how much handicap the best human needs. In normal chess, knight odds is enough for a top human (except with very short time limit); in Crazyhouse I don't think knight odds would be nearly enough.

Do you have an estimate of how big a handicap you would need to defeat a strong CrazyHouse chess, in tournament conditions ?

I am not a strong enough CrazyHouse player to answer your question, but in Shogi, the game that presumably inspired CrazyHouse chess with similar drop rules, I need rook plus bishop handicap to beat the strongest engine, and I am still technically the top-ranked American shogi player on the last pre-pandemic Pan-Atlantic rating list (no U.S. events since the Pandemic). Those are the two strongest pieces in shogi!

and do you have an estimate what handicap the world's top shogi player would need to defeat the strongest engine?

I think that such a match at bishop handicap would be very close and interesting, though as with chess the human's chances go up with the time limit. In a game with a fast time limit I think that the human champ would lose with bishop handicap, with something like 3 hours per side he might have good chances. I haven't heard of any such games having been played; I'm sure that top pros have tried this privately, but not on record.

[Dann Corbit]

Fourth dimensional Go, played on a tesseract.
Hard to do in ordinary 3-space, but computers can always expand the inner dimension to enable one more.

[lkaufman]

Fourth dimensional Go, played on a tesseract.
Hard to do in ordinary 3-space, but computers can always expand the inner dimension to enable one more.

Go is not a "chess variant".