
Immortal Game - keiferski
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_Game
======
MAXPOOL
It would be interesting to see AlphaZero trained to play very aggressive
romantic style. AlphaImmortal's goal should be beating Magnus Carlsen 51% of
the time with the most amazing games ever played.

I think you could do this by changing the value function:

\- reward short game over long games,

\- draw reward closer to loss reward,

\- reward capture more.

In fact, I would like to play against AlphaImmortal specially trained to play
against my Elo-rating level opponents with 51% win rate. That would be fun!

~~~
V-2
As a matter of fact, AlphaZero already plays more aggressively than typically
expected of chess engines.

Eg. in a well-known game it beated Stockfish (the strongest traditional chess
engine), brilliantly sacrificing 3 pawns for a non-obvious, human-like
compensation.

This once again challenged the notion of what the perfect play boils down to
in chess.

Oversimplifying a bit, it had already been assumed that it's solely about
grinding the opponent down by mercilessly accumulating miniscule advantages,
while all the flashiness only worked because human players are error-prone.

As it turns out, it may have been just another limitation of chess engines as
we knew (and built) them.

~~~
lspears
Link to game? I'd like to watch that.

~~~
krackers
Possibly
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-MborNxYWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-MborNxYWE)

Also a nice game:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFXJWPhDsSY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFXJWPhDsSY)

------
Fabled
Coincidentally I was watching reviews of some games from AlphaZero vs.
Stockfish 9 and people were amazed at the "human-like" nature of some of
AlphaZero's decisions. It was seemingly sacrificing material with no obvious
gain, only to come back much later in the game with a stronger strategic
position. While Stockfish evaluates all possible moves it is limited by
computation time and can't see too far into the future. AlphaZero responded
much faster because it has already precomputed the expected probability of
winning for most branches, so it can seemingly blunder when in fact it is
following the path that led to victory most often.

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8bitsrule
A seven-minute summary of the game, and some history too!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaKWUiiEHgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaKWUiiEHgA)

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eru
Compare (one of the best) chess games that isn't even a chess game:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/e2n3df/kramnik_propo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/e2n3df/kramnik_proposes_a_variant_nocastling_chess/)

~~~
default-kramer
What is interesting is in the comments on chess.com, people propose "NBC [no
black castling] Armageddon" meaning black is not allowed to castle but wins
with a draw. And it seems balanced! I'd really like to see some top humans try
it out.

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mik09
kinda reminds me of josh waitskin

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letientai299
It was an interesting read. But ... why is it on HN home page with just 3
points within 45m?

~~~
Reventlov
Because Americans are sleeping.

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Glosster
Who else thinks that Chess is too simple and too boring compared to other
strategy games that we have now? Starcraft 2, Agricola, Twilight Struggle,
Through The Ages, etc.

~~~
zeitg3ist
All these games include some sort of random component and thus cannot be
compared to chess which is purely skill based.

~~~
Retric
Starcraft is deterministic, the only random element is how people click. Slow
the game to 1/10,000th current speed and it’s turn based.

~~~
jmgao
Starcraft is not deterministic, and the nondeterminism can matter in
significant ways.

In Starcraft 1, every ranged attack had a 120/256 chance of missing a unit
that was up a hill or behind a tree, and a 1/256 chance of missing always.

In Starcraft 2, attack cooldowns are slightly randomized, so two units that
are commanded to attack each other will almost never kill each other
simultaneously.

~~~
qazpot
By your argument Pokemon is also a non deterministic game

~~~
rictic
Pokemon is highly nondeterministic. To take just one example, there are many
moves which probabalistically induce game-changing status effects on the
enemy.

~~~
Retric
This is exploitably incorrect. It seems that way to players but tool assisted
Pokemon speed runs regularly use luck manipulation.
[https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Luck_manipulation](https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Luck_manipulation)

Games have had really bad prng’s for preformance reasons and gamers have been
exploiting them for years. The most extreme example is probably Doom’s which
was simply a hard coded list of numbers.
[https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator](https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator)

~~~
djur
Luck manipulation is only possible in more recent entries by exploiting game-
external factors like the system clock. But, in any case, when it comes to
comparing games implemented in software (like Pokemon) with games that aren't,
you have to distinguish between "the game" and "the software". The Pokemon
game is designed to be non-deterministic from the player's perspective,
regardless of the fact that the Pokemon software may be deterministic in some
detectable or manipulable way. Just like craps would still be a game of chance
even if you figure out how to fix your rolls.

~~~
Retric
So in your mind actual Pokémon games are deterministic, but the platonic ideal
for Pokémon is not. Why would you assume the real Pokémon game was your mental
model?

I mean the software implementation defines the game and it’s the only thing
anyone has ever played. It seems to me any change you make results in a
different game. It’s not like a game allowing pawns to move 3 spaces can be
called Chess even if everything else was the same.

~~~
lonelappde
The point is that nothing is random, even pure games of chance, if you have
enough physical data about the rng.

Humans playing Pokemon on a standard device cannot manipulate luck.

~~~
Retric
Actually humans can exploit the prng on for example Generation III Pokemon. It
takes frame perfect timing, which limits how long you can do so, but it is
possible at the start of the game.

This really falls into the same category as speed running using save game
glitch:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHTK5GLOFVM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHTK5GLOFVM)
aka possible but only really useful if you’re trying to do something very
specific.

Anyway, while I understand you assume this stuff to be impossible I simply
suggest you do some research before bringing it up.

