
Show HN: Play Chess Without Moving Pieces - fonosip
http://ba.net/juegos/crazychess-guessposition/
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pavel_lishin
Some instructions would be nice; it looks like I do have to move pieces, I'm
just dumped into the middle of a game.

edit: Oh, I see, there's a help link ,and "guess white", "guess black" and
"guess draw" at the bottom. When you click one, the computer will play until
the game is over (or you declare the game to be a draw).

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hjek
And it would be nice with an indicator telling whose turn it is.

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GCA10
This isn't as much fun as I thought. The engine pursues a primitive attacking
strategy, often missing the best moves. I got the first five right, not
because I did deep analysis of the position, but because I simply started
picking whichever side could jam its queen into some sort of attack in a
hurry.

I picked draw on the sixth one, which was an intriguingly well-balanced
position -- and the engine managed to turn it into a crazy slaughter-fest
within five moves and an eventual 55-move win for white.

With a better engine, this could be quite a good test of chess skill and
strategic insight.

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fonosip
If you have a fast machine it is better to click on the "computer level
slowest". AI searches a deeper tree of moves.

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GCA10
It plays a bit better at the supposed ELO 1900 level, but it still stumbles
into some very avoidable pins, etc.

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fonosip
I changed the chess engine to chess-gym. Give it a try, it seems a bit better.
Also you can import your own FENs now

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calcsam
The game seems to be buggy: "King's Indian - Steven Cordy vs Martinez Garcia,
Warsaw, 1991" \-- it just keeps going in a loop endlessly. Neither the AI nor
the game engine seems to be aware of perpetual move draw:

5 Qh6+ Kf6 46 Qg5+ Kg7 47 Qh6+ Kf6 48 Qg5+ Kg7 49 Qh6+ Kf6 50 Qg5+ Kg7 51 Qh6+
Kf6 52 Qg5+ Kg7 53 Qh6+ Kf6 54 Qg5+ Kg7 55 Qh6+ Kf6 56 Qg5+ Kg7 57 Qh6+ Kf6 58
Qg5+ Kg7 59 Qh6+

etc

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DrScump
Same with "French Advance - Erkki Havansi vs Jorma Kekki, Jyvaskyla, 1993" I
had assumed that this would be a replay of this actual game.

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ryandrake
Although I am far, far from a chess expert, it seems like with so many moves
left to play, unless you know whether one player is more skilled than the
other, one's guess is as good as another's. Might as well guess a coin flip.
Maybe if the state of the board was "later into the match" it would be
possible to judge whether one side had an advantage and allow you to guess
better. Then again, maybe I just suck at reading a chess board and the side
with the advantage IS obvious here.

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kqr
> it seems like with so many moves left to play, unless you know whether one
> player is more skilled than the other, one's guess is as good as another's.
> Might as well guess a coin flip.

Consider it exercises in intuitionistic positional judgment, rather than a
game of "hey try to play this out in your head".

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asimpletune
Does it say who's to play or is it always assumed white starts?

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fonosip
White starts, unless Black mentioned in the title of the game

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zeroer
It doesn't recognize threefold repetition draw. Also, a couple times I saw it
miss some tricky tactics that would have won. Very nice and fun idea with a
bit of polish. It needs a real chess engine.

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DrScump

      It doesn't recognize threefold repetition draw.
    

That isn't an automatic draw like a stalemate is; either player can _claim_ a
draw at that point.

Fun fact: in the Fischer vs. Spassky title match, the judge made an error in
awarding Fisher a draw by misinterpreting the rule!

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zeroer
You're right. But what I saw the computer do was repeat the same position
thousands of times in an identical cycle of four moves. A decent AI should
stop wasting its time and claim a draw at that point. So maybe this is also an
AI strength issue rather than the platform recognizing a draw.

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jrpt
How's this different from any other tactics trainers or tactic books?

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fonosip
It is more of a game than a serious study tool. You can also guess games on
random piece boards [http://ba.net/juegos/crazychess-
guessposition/](http://ba.net/juegos/crazychess-guessposition/) or play
against the engine
[http://ba.net/juegos/crazychess/](http://ba.net/juegos/crazychess/)

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mcnamaratw
I couldn't figure out who has the move!

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fonosip
Always assume White, unless Black to move on title of game

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uvestyli
this is an interesting concept

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fonosip
Thanks

