
Zugzwang - vo2maxer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang
======
lawrenceyan
A great example I love showing people is Alpha Zero's infamous "Immortal
Zugzwang Game" against Stockfish [0]. Stockfish gets utterly annihilated in a
trap that seemingly springs out of nowhere, though of course the reality is
that Alpha Zero was actually really in control the entire time.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFXJWPhDsSY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFXJWPhDsSY)

~~~
spectramax
This is insanely exciting. I am terrible at Chess, but I've watched thousands
of games on Youtube over the last 10 years or so.

Optically and mechanically, this game feels so refreshing. After being exposed
to this almost robotic way of playing at the top GM levels - standard
openings, usually the novelty starts around move 12-16 and sometimes longer!
It is difficult to describe the "style" of AlphaZero. The best way I can
describe it is by comparing how intermediate players chess without being
exposed to a lot of theory.

Amazing and exciting for Chess fans.

~~~
ramshorns
So the humans play more robotically than the robots.

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
"The problem is not computers thinking like people, it's people thinking like
computers."

(I think I read this quotation dated back to the 1960s or 70s, attributed to
one of usual suspects of that time, but cannot find search results for it now
...)

~~~
notanote
“The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that
men will begin to think like computers.“

— Sydney J. Harris As quoted, without citation, in Howard W. Eves, Return to
Mathematical Circles, (1988), 63.

[https://todayinsci.com/H/Harris_Sydney/HarrisSydney-
Quotatio...](https://todayinsci.com/H/Harris_Sydney/HarrisSydney-
Quotations.htm)

------
sprain
In German language, the word Zugzwang is also often used figuratively to
describe a situation in which you are forced to take (unwanted) action due to
external circumstances.

Example from recent news: Most online shops offer Black Friday deals. The ones
that don‘t are „under Zugzwang“ to join them.

~~~
philshem
I know this is an English forum, but for this German learner, could you write
out the whole example sentence? (I’d mostly like to see which preposition is
used. My dictionary says “jmnd. _in_ Zugzwang bringen” but your sentence has a
different usage.)

~~~
rbinv
"Ich stand unter Zugzwang" is just as correct as "Das neue Produkt der
Konkurrenz bringt uns in Zugzwang", although being "under" Zugzwang sounds
more common to me. You could also say "Das Produkt sorgt für Zugzwang".

~~~
majewsky
"Unter Zugzwang stehen" and "in Zugzwang bringen" both sound natural to me,
but "für Zugzwang sorgen" doesn't. (It's not incorrect, but it's not a common
combination.)

Source: Am a native German speaker.

------
mantap
Another German named situation is zwischenzug, which is an intermediate move.

If your opponent makes a threat against your piece, instead of making the
expected move to block, move, capture, etc; you can instead temporarily
threaten one of your opponent's pieces elsewhere as long as it has a greater
value, this forces your opponent to suddenly act defensively to protect
_their_ piece, which if exploited correctly can put you in a better position.
You will still have to answer your opponent's original attack and defend your
original piece but now you have some extra compensation.

Basically you are exploiting the fact that your opponent thought they had
played a forcing move and so they probably didn't consider the effect on other
parts of the board.

~~~
Scarblac
And if the Zwischenzug is a move that puts a piece somewhere where it can be
easily captured (perhaps because it could already be, or because there are
already lots of pieces attacked and the opponent can only take one at a time)
then it is called a _desperado_.

------
qrian
Another interesting zugzwang situation is the game of animal shōgi [0], a
simplified shōgi game that is strongly solved and found to be zugzwang
position from the start.

[0]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dōbutsu_shōgi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dōbutsu_shōgi)

~~~
pedrocr
Sometimes people struggle to understand that chess may very well be solved as
a win for black. This is a great illustration of that.

------
semitext
I'm a big fan of many Michael Brough games like Imbroglio, 868-HACK, and Cinco
Paus because of how well he incorporates zugzwang into his designs. They
always end up being these tiny, delightful challenges.

------
abc03
For German learners: It‘s a compound word. In German, and in English to some
extent, you can join words to create a new word, e.g.
Abstimmungsbekanntmachung (election notice).

~~~
weinzierl
To elaborate: _Zug_ is _move_ (the noun) and _Zwang_ means coercion or force.
So being in _Zugzwang_ is means being in a situation where one is _forced_ to
_move_.

~~~
lgas
If it's move (the noun) rather than move (the verb) then wouldn't it be more
accurate to say it means being in a situation where one's _move_ is _forced_?
(ie. the specific move is forced, rather than just being forced to make some
move)

~~~
weinzierl
>the specific move is forced, rather than just being forced to make some move

Thinking about this gives me headaches;-) From a language perspective I think
it could be interpreted both ways, a _specific_ move or _any_ move. The reason
I chose the latter explanation is that it fit's with the real meaning of the
word:

> one player is put at a disadvantage because they must make a move when they
> would prefer to pass and not move.[1]

The point is that the player is at a disadvantage because they have to move at
all and not because they are forced to make a specific move.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang)

------
strenholme
Here’s a game which ends with a Zugzwang:

[https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008255](https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008255)
(future world champion Botvinnik vs Thomas; Nottingham 1936)

In the game, at the end, black is now, because of Zugzwang, forced to advance
and weaken his f pawn. In a chess variant where players could pass instead of
moving, it would be drawn, but since black _must_ move, it is won for white.

White now simply has to move his king across the board, use it to take the now
unprotected f pawn, then use the knight and king to take black’s b pawn, then
promote one of his pawns to checkmate the black king.

Black wisely resigned.

------
m12k
I've played a lot of Hearthstone over the years and it has a concept similar
to putting someone in check in Chess: Reducing their health to where one or
two hits can kill them. Minions in Hearthstone can attack the opponent's
minions or the opponent themselves - and most decks try to do the former
efficiently (value-trade) and only attack (the opponent's) 'face' if they
can't (either because all enemy minions are gone or there are no good trades
to be had). The reason for this is that each player starts with a pretty big
pool of health, so bringing that down to 0 must be a long term goal and going
for that too greedily will cause you to lose board control and never get
there. Only the most aggressive decks break this rule ('face is the place'
goes the aggro motto). But interestingly one of the skills of the best players
when playing slower decks is to know when to 'break character' and just go for
'face damage' instead even if it only puts the opponent low on health rather
than outright killing them. At that point, the opponent is forced to make any
trade they can in order to protect the little life they have left - they are
in check. You 'reframe the conversation' by putting your opponent on their
back heel.

Anyways, reading about Zugzwang made me wonder if there is a similar concept
in Hearthstone too. And coincidentally, the latest expansion comes with a card
that kinda fits the bill [1]. It generates powerful minions for you whenever
you take damage, but is itself a minion with a lot of health, so it's hard to
take down. When played against an aggressive deck with a lot of small minions,
they get the choice of 1) Doing what they normally would do - attack your face
- resulting in building you an army that would win you the game in a turn our
two 2) Trading into the big minion to try to get rid of it - these are very
inefficient trades and likely to not even succeed this turn or 3) Do nothing -
which is probably the last thing they want to do, as the window of opportunity
for an aggro deck to win gets smaller over time.

Obviously having this as a specific card isn't as elegant as the way this can
be generated from the existing rules with a specific board state in chess, but
I find it interesting to see how many of these more advanced game concepts can
be put into a more casual game.

[1]
[https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Zzeraku_the_Warped](https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Zzeraku_the_Warped)

~~~
kazga
Zugzwang does not exist in Hearthstone, doing nothing is always a rule-
compliant option.

------
bladedtoys
You can construct a cool game out of non-transitive dice that does this on the
very first move but in a completely counter-intuitive way.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontransitive_dice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontransitive_dice)

------
andrepd
An extremely rare zugzwang with _10_ pieces +kings and pawns on the board.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_Zugzwang_Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_Zugzwang_Game)

------
lspears
Poker has the concept of positional advantage. Acting later is an advantage
because you gain more information from your opponent. Although chess is a
total information game and doesn't have this phenomenon, the player at turn
can still be at a disadvantage due to circumstance.

------
noisy_boy
May be it is not a coincidence that this word came up in one of the episode in
season 4 of Billions[0].

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billions_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billions_\(TV_series\))

------
ronilan
And from that we can conclude that when someone has nothing to lose (and/or
nothing they expect or hope to win) - one can not be “in Zugzwang”. That is,
they might be moving, but their situation can not get worse.

~~~
Scarblac
Well, a position with say a bare king and against a king and a rook is only
lost because of zugzwang. If it was an option to pass, the side with the rook
would not be able to force checkmate.

~~~
ronilan
I wasn’t thinking specifically about chess, more broadly about life. For
example in the case you presented the side with the bare king is not “in
Zugzwang” cause his position can’t get worse. See, right now they are stuck in
this useless position, but once the other side forces a checkmate they can
finally end the stupid game and go home do something enjoyable...

------
tromp
The game of Go played on a 2x1 board apparears to be zugzwang right from the
start, where any first move played is bad, due to the ko rule.

Since Go allows passing it's not a real zugzwang though...

------
astrobe_
_Zugswang_ happens in software too: when your software project is done but
people think it is dead because it has not been updated in 18 months...

~~~
Y-bar
Can't situations like that be solved with a sentence in the readme (without
moving into a worse situation)?

"This software is feature-complete, it works well for its intended purpose.
And if you were to experience a bug, someone will read your bug report." … or
something like that.

~~~
heavenlyblue
Do people do that really?

Most of the time when I think a project is dead: Docker image for the project
hadn’t been updated in years; many issues of Github with no replies?

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brownbat
This comes up in The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Chabon, an unique noirish
alternate history dealing with chess and culture, among other things.

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nose4job
Zugzwang doesn't appear in Go game that often as in chess, even though it's
much more complex game.

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webappguy
Americans call this up shit Creek without a paddle

