A major element of serious chess play is the study of
openings* -- of known series of moves from the starting position whose effects to the later stages of the game are well established through previous games and through manual and computer analysis.
Chess960 a.k.a.
Fischer Random Chess was introduced in 1996 by chess genius (and reclusive paranoid anti-semite) Bobby Fischer as an alternative that aims to remove the emphasis on this laborious element while keeping other central aspects of the game intact. The tagline of one blog dedicated to the game calls it
'a return to the pleasure of the first move in a vast unexplored wilderness'. Some of this wilderness is being explored with new theory, linked below the fold among other things.
[more inside]
posted by Anything
on Feb 2, 2012 -
34 comments
Photographs of the Prison Chess series were taken in 2008 and 2009 in a maximum security facility of the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Jan 27, 2012 -
18 comments
A recent XKCD comic charted the difficulty of various games for computers, from
Tic Tac Toe and
Nim being solved for all positions, to computers mastering the physical game of
Beirut and mental game of
chess (
the 2006 Deep Fritz vs Vladimir Kramnikin games, previously). There are other games that are basic on the face, but whose potentials for move combinations is so vast as to be beyond the scope of computers.
Marion Tinsley was the last great human checkers player, matching off against
Chinook in the last 6 games of his life, each ending in a draw (
previously).
Checkers was finally solved in 2007 (Google quickview;
original PDF), and is largest game that has been solved to date, at 8x8.
Solving Othello might be possible, if the decision tree were truncated, as
the 10x10 board game tree complexity is very huge.
The 19x19 Go board is is often noted as one of the primary reasons why a strong program is hard to create, though
some programs are
getting better at
optimizing move evaluations. More:
computerized gaming solutions previously, and
the Wikipedia page for solved games.
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 11, 2012 -
57 comments
On December 4, 2005, the computer chess community was astonished by the initial release of a free, downloadable chess program named Rybka 1.0 Beta, which within days took a sizable lead on all then-existing chess program rankings, surpassing all commercial programs, including renowned engines Shredder, HIARCS, Fritz and Junior.
[snip]
In early 2011 sixteen chess programmers, many of whose programs were direct competitors of Rybka, signed a letter wherein they asserted that Rajlich copied programming code from another engine, Fruit, authored by Fabien Letouzey and released to the public in June 2005, about six months before Rybka 1.0 Beta.
A
four part analysis of the International Computer Games Association decision. (full paper in
pdf)
[more inside]
posted by rider
on Jan 6, 2012 -
47 comments
Three grand masters have been
caught cheating at a chess Olympiad. The team members communicated using instructions disguised as phone numbers and and an ingenious system relating positions within the room to positions on the board. Details of the system and the way it was revealed can be found
here, and the French Chess Federation's report (in French)
here.
posted by Joe in Australia
on Mar 24, 2011 -
74 comments
"It was my luck (perhaps my bad luck) to be the world chess champion during the critical years in which computers challenged, then surpassed, human chess players. [...] What if instead of human versus machine we played as partners? My brainchild saw the light of day in a match in 1998 in León, Spain, and we called it "Advanced Chess." Each player had a PC at hand running the chess software of his choice during the game. The idea was to create the highest level of chess ever played, a synthesis of the best of man and machine."
The Chess Master and the Computer: A article/book review on computer chess and the state of the top-level chess world by Garry Kasparov.
[more inside]
posted by painquale
on Jan 26, 2010 -
43 comments
To play for a draw, at any rate with White, is to some degree a crime against chess. A Latvian Jew with
ectrodactyly and lifelong kidney ailments,
Mikhail Tal is considered one of the most
audacious attacking players in the game's history. For a quarter century, he held the record of being the youngest man to win the World Championship. And his streak of 95 consecutive games without a loss is unmatched to this day.
[more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on Oct 9, 2009 -
14 comments
The Great Chess Doping Scandal Grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk refused to submit a urine sample for a drug test at the Chess Olympiad in Dresden and is now considered guilty of doping. The world of chess is outraged that he could face a two-year ban... [He] has been a grandmaster for the past 20 years and is currently ranked third in the world. [more inside]
posted by caddis
on Dec 12, 2008 -
36 comments
The Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin to
PLAY CHESS wit.
WuChess.com is the worlds first online chess and Hip-Hop community. You can create and share profiles with your friends and triumph over enemies on the 64 squares. Not just against people in your neighborhood but from all over the world. Play live chess with people from all over the world and get your learn on. Blog.
posted by ColdChef
on Jul 17, 2008 -
30 comments
At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, "International Chess" was the only widely known chess variant in the West. It had its problems. People
tried to
solve them. Of course, they could just play
xiangqi instead. There's also
janggi,
Makruk, and the granddaddy of them all,
chaturanga. Perhaps the most refined game in the family, however, is Japanese Chess--
shogi.
[more inside]
posted by sonic meat machine
on Feb 15, 2008 -
9 comments
For nearly two decades, fifty computers have been running day and night on an extremely complex problem. Today, scientists from the University of Alberta announced the result of all that work - they have
solved the game of checkers. Chinook, the computer program they developed, can never be beaten -
try for yourself. While checkers is the most complicated game to be solved so far, it is
not the only one. You can play a
perfect game of tic-tac-toe, of course, but also
connect four, and a 6x6 board of the game
othello. Chess players are already
thinking ahead to when their game is solved, with
Advanced Chess being Gary Kasparov's answer. The hardest game to completely solve might be Go, which
may not be solved until 2100.
posted by blahblahblah
on Jul 19, 2007 -
76 comments
