AlphaZero No Castling Chess

[Javier Ros]

It seems that AlphaZero has been trained to play "no-castling chess", see the interesting article

Kramnik And AlphaZero: How To Rethink Chess‎

at

https://www.chess.com/article/view/no-c ... -alphazero

[dragontamer5788]

It seems odd that they didn't discuss the draw-rate of this variant. Or did I miss it? The two example games listed there are draws.

I think Chess should have sharper games overall with a lower draw rate. Armageddon chess is a good step forward, but seems to favor Black. There have been other discussions about other rulesets similar to Armageddon (complicating the rules: 50-move == White Win, Stalemate == Black Win, etc. etc.)... but finding a set of Chess rules with fewer draws and more balanced gameplay should be the goal.

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The idea of using AlphaZero as a "easily trained expert" for new chess variants seems like a good methodology. Perhaps we could encode this as a search problem: how to change the rules of chess to increase win/loss rate of experts and decrease the draw rate.

[supersharp77]

It seems that AlphaZero has been trained to play "no-castling chess", see the interesting article

Kramnik And AlphaZero: How To Rethink Chess‎

at

https://www.chess.com/article/view/no-c ... -alphazero

The Return Of Alpha Zero With No Castling Chess! When Will The LC0 vs Alpha Zero Chess Championship match be Played?
The Chess World Awaits This Great Match
Alpha Zero (A) vs Alpha Zero (B)
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 c5 4. d5 exd5 5. cxd5 Qe7 6. Qa4 Kd8 7. Nf3 d6 8. Bf4 g6 9. h4 Bg7 10. Rc1 Nbd7 11. Nb5 Ne8 12. b4 Qe4 13. Bg5+ f6 14. Bd2 h6 15. Qa3 a6 16. e3 cxb4 17. Nxd6 bxa3 18. Nxe4 f5 19. Ng3 Bb2 20. h5 g5 21. Nxf5 Nb6 22. N5d4 Nf6 23. Ne5 Re8 24. Nf7+ Kd7 25. Be2 Nbxd5 26. Nxh6 b5 27. Rc2 Bb7 28. Nhf5 Rac8 29. f3 Nc3 30. h6 Bd5 31. Ng7 Re5 32. Bd3 Bxa2 33. h7 Nxh7 34. Bxh7 Rc4 35. Bf5+ Kc7 36. Bd3 Rcc5 37. Bc1 Na4 38. Bxb2 axb2 39. Kd2 b1=N+ 40. Rxb1 Bxb1 41. Nge6+ Kb6 42. Rxc5 Nxc5 43. Nxc5 Kxc5 44. Bxb1 Re8 45. g3 Rd8 46. g4 Kb6 47. Bd3 Rg8 48. Bf5 Rd8 49. Ke2 a5 50. Bd3 a4 51. Nxb5 Kc5 52. Kd2 Rb8 53. Kc2 Re8 54. Kd2 Rb8 55. f4 gxf4 56. exf4 Rf8 57. f5 Ra8 58. Na3 Rg8 59. Be2 Kd4 60. f6 Ke4 61. Nb5 a3 62. f7 Rf8 63. Bc4 Kf4 64. Kd3 Kxg4 65. Ke4 Kg5 66. Ke5 Kg6 67. Nd6 a2 68. Bxa2 Kg7 69. Ke6 Ra8 70. Bd5 Ra7 71. Nb7 Kf8 72. Nd8 Ra6+ 73. Nc6 Rb6 74. Kd6 Ra6 75. Kd7 Rb6 76. Ne5 Rf6 77. Kd8 Rf2 78. Bc4 Kg7 79. Ke7 Rf6 80. Ba2 Rf5 81. Ng6 Rf6 82. Nh4 Rf4 83. Bd5 Kh6 84. Be6 Rxf7+ 85. Kxf7 Kg5 86. Ng6 Kh6 87. Kf6 Kh5 88. Bh3 Kh6 89. Ne5 Kh5 90. Kf5 Kh6 91. Bg4 Kg7 92. Be2 Kh6 93. Bf3 Kg7 94. Kg5 Kf8 95. Kg6 Kg8 96. Be4 Kh8 97. Kh6 Kg8 98. Bd5+ Kf8 99. Nc4 Ke8 100. Kg6 Kf8 101. Kf6 Ke8 102. Ne5 Kd8 103. Kf7 Kc8 104. Ke7 Kc7 105. Nc4 Kc8 106. Bc6 Kc7 107. Ba4 Kc8 108. Kf6 Kd8 109. Ke6 Kc7 110. Be8 Kd8 111. Bc6 Kc7 112. Ba4 Kd8 113. Kf6 Kc7 114. Ke5 Kd8 115. Kd6 Kc8 116. Ke7 Kc7 117. Bd7 Kb8 118. Kd8 Kb7 119. Bb5 Kb8 120. Nd6 Ka7 121. Kc7 Ka8 122. Bc4 Ka7 123. Nc8+ Ka8 124. Bd5# 1-0

[Ovyron]

I think Chess should have sharper games overall with a lower draw rate.

I just thought about this variant the other day:

If the game ends in draw, the first player that checked the other during the game is awarded a win.

There we go, no more draws and no more hitting our heads against the wall figuring out draw odds. Just, a check and defend to avoid losing and you got the game.

[lkaufman]

I think Chess should have sharper games overall with a lower draw rate.

I just thought about this variant the other day:

If the game ends in draw, the first player that checked the other during the game is awarded a win.

There we go, no more draws and no more hitting our heads against the wall figuring out draw odds. Just, a check and defend to avoid losing and you got the game.

The last player to check rather than the first makes more sense to me as a tiebreaker, with Black winning in case no one ever gave check. But I think there are much better ways to tiebreak that are more in the spirit of chess. Ideally making repetition illegal, stalemate a win for the stalemating side, and bare king a loss, with Black winning fifty move rule draws, could work, but I think it would still favor Black too much. It could be tested with engines, and if Black does win too much, further tiebreak rules could be added until it becomes about fair.

[Ovyron]

But I think there are much better ways to tiebreak that are more in the spirit of chess. Ideally making repetition illegal, stalemate a win for the stalemating side, and bare king a loss, with Black winning fifty move rule draws, could work, but I think it would still favor Black too much. It could be tested with engines, and if Black does win too much, further tiebreak rules could be added until it becomes about fair.

I'm looking for a simple solution, one you can explain to a child that just learned to play chess. All those things are very complicated and arbitrary (a position could have been won for the other side, for no reason!)

I just played 3-check chess the other day and it can get very intense, but a problem it has is that once you can give a check and increase the chances that you'll make two more, players start making very unlike-chess moves. But what if there was an optimal amount of checks to give that would solve the problem?

I'm not talking about no-draws here, and I'm not talking about using this for tie breaking, I'm saying that this subset of chess makes sense, because if your advantage is strong enough to win the game, then surely it's strong enough to deliver the amount of checks needed also.

Players would start with a "Life Bar", say, 10 Hit Points for their king. They're playing a normal chess game, but every time their king is checked, they lose a point, and once it's 0 the other player wins. If the game ends in draw the player with most Hit Points wins. If you are up on Hit Points and the opponent can't deliver a check anymore they can resign already.

Such a thing is easy to explain and just have normal chess with a few words added to the win condition:

Checkmate the opponent king, give it 10 checks or be the one that gave the most checks if the game ends in draw.

Hmm, turns out even simpler would be to count how many checks happened in the game and award a win to the player that gave the most ones. Would this change so much the nature of the game?

[Raphexon]

Hard to see how this would increase the amount of decisive matches.

No castling cuts down the search tree quite hard so it should be much easier for an engine to see the forced win or forced draw.

Maybe for human chess it can make the game a lot more decisive because positions become sharper, but it gets a lot easier for Stockfish and the gang.

[the_real_greco]

There have been a lot of crazy rule changes to chess during the last thousand years... but they occurred because people started playing the new variant, not discussing it.

Did Kramnik actually play a no-castling game? I see a bunch of A0-A0 games but nothing with him. Which is not exactly a ringing endorsement of no-castling.

[BeyondCritics]

Chessbase India has produced an interview, where Kramnik share his thoughts about Nocastling chess and demonstrates a beautiful Alpha Zero self play game.

[carldaman]

I think Chess should have sharper games overall with a lower draw rate.

I just thought about this variant the other day:

If the game ends in draw, the first player that checked the other during the game is awarded a win.

There we go, no more draws and no more hitting our heads against the wall figuring out draw odds. Just, a check and defend to avoid losing and you got the game.

The last player to check rather than the first makes more sense to me as a tiebreaker, with Black winning in case no one ever gave check. But I think there are much better ways to tiebreak that are more in the spirit of chess. Ideally making repetition illegal, stalemate a win for the stalemating side, and bare king a loss, with Black winning fifty move rule draws, could work, but I think it would still favor Black too much. It could be tested with engines, and if Black does win too much, further tiebreak rules could be added until it becomes about fair.

What would be more drastic - changing the rules whereby how the game is won, or altering the starting position, or just the castling rules?

It looks to me that the first option (changing the scoring rules) is way too radical and would mess with the fabric of the game. I know there was a time when bare king or stalemate were counted as a win, but why were those rules changed? It had to be because the current rules work better than the old ones.

For instance, making stalemate a loss would directly affect all (piece &) pawn endgames, but by extension the whole game. People would hesitate to take any chances because the loss of one pawn would doom the player to an almost certain loss in the endgame. Play would become more sterile and materialistic, basically killing the game.