I'm a 2k fide rated player and there's lot wrong with the ideas in "chess, but good" 1. Starting positions that register as the most balanced, 0.00 can and probably often are threefold repetition draws. It's more likely that one side will be down in material but can force a draw than randomly placed pieces happen to be at 0.00 eval. 2. Just because an engine evaluated the position as equal doesn't mean it is equal for humans. There are a ton of positions that register as equal but every GM would rather play one side because that is the only side that can make progress, while the other side can only defend, or one side has only one hard-to-find path that leads to equality, while the other side can play whatever they want. It happens fairly often in chess. 3. Chess openings shouldn't be viewed as a barrier of entry but as a means to get to a middlegame that both players have played into. The opening is just a bus that takes you to an interesting position already. When you run out of opening prep, what you're left with is an interesting position. If you're facing an opponent that's better than you, he might win in the opening by knowing theory, but if he knows that much more theory than you, he probably would have crushed you anyways. Plus, theory is so impossibly diverse that the vast majority of games are different by move 10, and it's vastly diminishing returns to learn a lot of theory. You can get to 2000 by learning virtually no opening theory, as I have done. 4. The position created is so chaotic, it only is fun for tactical players. If you are more positionally minded which is half of all ideas in chess, then it takes some of it out for you. There's no pawn structures, you can have two same colour bishops. Beautiful positional ideas like bishop pairs and minority attacks and backwards pawns and weak squares and forcing outposts are just thrown out the window. 5. The half point advantage is imbalanced, but it dissuades the two sides from behaving similar to each other. Black generally plays aggressive and there can be some great imbalanced positions like Evans gambit, smith morra, najdorf, Marshall gambit, grunfeld, KID etc. It's kind of like Ts vs CTs in CS:GO, unbalanced but still fun to play both sides. I have met people who like playing black more than playing white. Plus, if you play chess anywhere online or over the board, they alternate white and black. Overall, I get the feeling you are not much of a chess player and more a mathematician or coder. I am a CS major myself, so I get the beauty of randomizing the pieces, but it just doesn't work for my chess mind. Maybe it's a fun alternative game for people who have never played chess, but not many chess players would enjoy your variant. Thanks for reading my long ass feedback/criticism, I meant no offence, so please don't take any.
Brilliant! See, all my friends told me this was a terrible idea, and at some intuitive level I knew it was too, but none of us are actually good enough at Chess to articulate why; thus the more jokey tone of this video. That being said, I did anticipate point one, and the actual script disqualifies positions that evaluate to exactly zero. It was easy enough to tell just by watching Stockfish play itself that they were all dead games. Personally, I genuinely prefer to play Good Chess over normal Chess, but I've honestly hardly played much of either. 😁 The real joy to me is how robust the UCI protocol for chess engines is and how much you can get away with doing very little coding. It's fun to tweak the parameters and see what sorts of different results you can get. One thing that I think could be fun would be generating unbalanced boards, or even ones with forced mates, and seeing if you can beat Stockfish from that advantageous position. Since this video was meant to be mostly a joke I didn't want to go into too much nuance like that, but maybe at some point I'll make a follow-up. Thanks for the fantastic analysis. It's great to have as a reference!
pimanrules no problem. I would suggest picking up chess as a hobby if you're not too busy with other stuff. It is my favourite game and appeals to the logical and analytical mind. Many chess players are mathematicians and software developers.
kevin chen many mathematicians and software developers are also alcoholics that prefer not to think on downtime. Some things in life are quasi-transitive. Programming is a hobby for many of us. It’s just coincidence in life to turn hobby into profession (like playing chess).
the only thing i don't agree with as a 1500 Glicko2 player: "but if he knows that much more theory than you, he probably would have crushed you anyways."/ Personally i lost a lot of games against friends because of not knowing opening book. But when i started to play 1.h4 i started to win. That shows that (my friends at least) they were gaining advantage not through calculation. Loosing main path and they are lost. And i believe that applies to most of
I was gonna say the same thing. This is a fun example of a numbers trap. "Statistically better" doesn't always mean better end results. A personal example I used to experience a lot was in Destiny 2. My buddies I used to play with would say "Ok, everybody use X weapon because it has the highest theoretical damage on this fight." In this case we'll just say Whisper of the Worm. It's a sniper rifle that can do some of the highest damage in the game, If you can land 3 consecutive shots on a weak point in quick succession. If you can't, it does less DPS than a lot of other weapons just spraying a non weak point. I would then tell them, "I am terrible with sniper rifles, I would do much more damage with weapon Y instead. Weapon Y even ignores some of the bosses mechanics and would do close to Whisper's optimal damage" They would ignore me, because statistically the Whisper can do more. If I used the weapon I was better with, even if they all died on their own long before me by being out of position, it would be my fault we lost because "I was holding the DPS back", regardless of what the damage charts said or them just standing in the red circles. They would be blinded by statistics instead of results. If I used the Whisper and they wiped, they would blame themselves. I even actually secretly tested them by not shooting during a fight at all, and they didn't notice a damn thing. They just wanted me to have that gun in my hands because it was "statistically better".
Yeah, the video is hilarious, but the overly-serious replies are even funnier. Does anyone think he's seriously proposing rolling dice thousands of times every time you want to play a game?
This is what chess is about. Being fun and creative. I used to mess around with weird piece arrangements with friends at school chess club all the time.
One chess variant I recently learned about is called fog of war, where you can only see squares that your pieces can move to. It sounds like it would be very drawish with neither players really making any progress without good information about the board, but what I really love is it introduces a whole other layer to the game that is incredibly interesting: bluffs. You could throw one of your minor pieces straight into the heart of an enemy position without being defended in any way, but your opponent has to decide whether or not he believes the piece is defended or if the attack is real.
@@Docwell chess is basically pure strategy, memorization doesn't get you anywhere unless you are on an extremely high level where you basically have to know every opening.
Those play testers sounded like they were held at gun point, and still couldn't get themselves to approve of this being the superior chess, which I just think is hilarious
The reason why this isn't the greatest innovation to chess in the last hundred years is that someone already made 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel (Yes, that is a real thing)
@@Some.username.idk.0 I think the main issue is that 1: Queens are OP. Like, i get theyre strong in normal chess, but in 5D chess, they are just downright broken and should be killed at the first opportunity, no matter the cost, as they will fuck you up. Look up the Terminator Gambit for more details. 2: Time travel, most of the time, isn't really worth it. Often times, time travelling is worth more to your opponent than to you when you do it.
@@Chrischi3TutorialLPs Time travel having its drawbacks kind of works since it forces you to work out the most advantageous way to use it (or just get forced to play out a softmate), however the game is kind of boring when both players completely ignore any time travel options, which only discards a few good move options here or there, and makes it much easier to play on a timer. Queens absolutely need the nerf though. Unchecked 3 and 4 dimensional movement is beyond busted and guaranteed to dominate the board. They turn every other piece that isn't the King into an afterthought by comparison.
How about making a new version of chess called *"Chess: Git Gud"* where you do everything for your variant of chess except choose the board with the largest advantage. Then pit amateurs against masters with that handicap.
Introducing, 5 player chess: -Arrange 5 chess boards into a cross -The first 4 teams (White, Black, Red and Blue) start with the standard configuration of pieces each at the far ends of the cross -Team 5 consists of 4 queens occupying the center of the cross, with an alternate lose condition (the loss of all 4 queens). If this is too heavily balanced against team 5, also give them 4 knights which can be arranged in any starting position in which they are adjacent to one of their queens
This might be a thing because pretty sure a video like that was on my recommendation I might be tripping tho Edit:NVM I wasn't tripping but it was 4 players ua-cam.com/video/poBJpzGVLXg/v-deo.html
How a Check works on this game? I mean, generally check mates are a game over, nit on those rules, as soon as one king is blocked, the game continues anyway. What would happen?
There's a board game called "combate" here in brazil. (Translates to combat, but I don't know if the game is called that anywhere else) Both players set up their boards and then they gotta capture the enemy flag. Simple enough. But, the thing is that the other player doesn't know what any of your guys are, because they all look exactly the same from 1 side. So, we can adapt this to chess, - everything looks like a pawn, and can move like a pawn (including bishops and knights, yes), - if the piece isn't an actual pawn, at any point you can use it's regular movement instead of a pawn move(the piece will still look like a pawn, but you did give away what it actually is, probably) - all pieces can move sideways one square at a time (because I think that makes it more interesting) - you may castle once, using the pieces in the regular positions of the king and rook, regular castling rules apply, except, the pieces don't have to be the king and rook, just be in the correct positions. - pieces can only capture with their normal moves.(so your knight and rook, can't capture diagonally like a pawn). I think this has potential to be quite fun. Now to test it... hopefully...
Here in Italy is called "Stratego" and it's a bit different. The pieces for the other player are all the same and almost all of them move like a pawn, but they are military ranks (general, captain, private, ecc...). Every rank has a number and when you want to capture a piece both players reveal their rank for that piece, the highest number captures the other. The goal is to capture the enemy flag (that has 0 as number)
I'm also triggered into a reply because it really is so close to a good idea, while also hilariously demonstrating the folly of "getting rid of the opening theory" approach that 960 and others try to accomplish. Many chess enthusiasts would agree that the opening is one of three pillars of chess and can be at least equally exciting as middle and endgame. Your endgame is all about technical precision, but your opening repertoire reflects your personality - it is your signature - it puts a personal touch on an otherwise sterile zero-sum game; having this vast amount legitimate ways to start the game is the very reason why chess is such an captivating game for centuries. At intermediate level, trying to manipulate your opponent playing into an opening that you want also has a strategic depth that is entirely distinct from the other stages in the game. However, studying all this theory can be tedious and at the highest level, when two super GM's are banging out up to 25 moves from memory, it alienates the game from spectators who don't have time or the interest to keep up with the latest GM meta in the QGD. So I think inventing new variants could be a hit in the online chess tournament scene and really benefit the game - but only if we find the middle ground between infinite possibility of totally random positions crap and classic setup. For instance, suppose you had a table of nine starting positions - all of which are designed by a GM/game designer, so they are interesting, balanced and aesthetically pleasing - then, and after each season of the tournament there will be a new set of positions. It would create a competitive space where the best players will try to develop the best theory in the limited time frame before the ladder resets; also would be a incubator for playtesting new positions that are interesting enough to become variants on their own.
I can't find a source for it, but I seem to remember something about how checkers tournaments used to do this, forcing players to randomly choose an opening for their game, as "play as you please" was extremely drawish.
@@AndrewBlechinger specifically, checkers from the default starting position is a solved game to a draw, so in order for games to consistently have winners and losers, a set of randomized starts needs to be made.
@@binarycat1237 No, it doesn't reflect your personality. It's simple, if you have spent more time grilling your tactics than your opponent then u will choose tactical positions while if it's the opposite then u will instead play a slav. Chess has NOTHING to do with someone's personality
Alternative Idea - Chesstego So named for its resemblance to the game Stratego. Begin with an empty board. Players can place their pieces on the board in any arrangement they like among the back three rows. Play then proceeds as normal, white to move first. There are two variants to explore, and I am curious how each would impact the relative 'fairness' of the opening positions. A) Blind Chesstego - Place an obstruction between the two sides so that neither player can see the other players' board while setting up. Players set up simultaneously. When both are done, the move the obstruction and begin play as normal. In this method, players are likely to have 'favorite arrangements' that they prefer to play from, which will then clash in glorious battle when the board is revealed. B) Active Chesstego - Players can see the pieces being placed. White places first, but do not simple-alternate. Instead, players place pieces in the 'fair share sequence' for reduce advantage: WBBW BWWB BWWB WBBW BWWB WBBW WBBW BWWB Since there are 32 pieces to place, a power of two, the sequence produces a mathematically 'fair' result in dividing up the value associated with the action of placing a piece. Since the players can openly see what the other is doing, it creates a sort of reactive 'pseudo-opening', where players may have their preferred starting arrangements, but can be flexible as they see their opponent's arrangement taking shape against them. In both cases, any advantage in the resulting board state arises purely from the relative skill and experience of the players, rather than from arbitrary factors. Each player has 24!/(8!8!2!2!2!) ~= 47.7 trillion possible starting positions. (24 spaces to arrange, with the 8 open spaces interchangeable, the 8 pawns interchangeable, as well as the 2 rooks, 2 bishops, and 2 knights); thus there are ~2.276x10^27 possible board starts. This is comparable in magnitude to the number of reachable board states after at least 24 total moves - similar to a 12 move opening from both players. If a program could analyze one board per nanosecond, it would take over 2x10^18 seconds (63 billion years) to fully map out the advantage grid, so it will generally come down to skill, experience, and personal preference; the true.
You're right in that players will be able to use existing chess theory in Blind Chesstego. The first idea I had that doesn't break the fourth-rank restriction is the Sodium Attack for white (so named for the first move: 1. Na3 2. c3 3. Nc2) to try to prep a pawn push to d4 once the barrier is removed. Other prep moves you can just plop down would be e3, Be2, Nf3, and of course O-O. Good luck with your dark squared bishop though.
Ok, so, dumb question, if we assume choice B, how is this not just moving the problem of opening theory backwards? If we assume there is an optimal setup (which I think is a fair assumption) then it's only a matter of time before players start trying to work towards that setup, in which case it's just opening theory all over again. Now I don't think that's a problem and I think it'd be a really interesting game, but I don't think it "solves" the problem of opening theory. Unless I missed something, which is entirely possible.
@@LazarNaskov the blind variant would alleviate this somewhat; its safe to assume any optimal position would quickly be replaced by a position that counters it. strategies with no hard counters would be ideal, and while it would still build to a metagame (there's going to be better positions still) it wouldn't be as set as chess opening positions. Plus, unpredictability would play a role; a player who does something you don't expect could push that advantage.
I love it. Already saved your comment to try it later. I have my own version too, quute different and never really playtested, so maybe unbalanced, but here it is: Basically, you setup the board by putting the 8 pawns on row 2 and 3, on squares of their color. Then on the 4 squares of your color on first line, you place 4 pieces of your choice (each poece has different moves and things like that I won't explain here). So, white pieces on white squares, and black pieces on black squares. Then, here's the actual catch: all pieces csn only move diagonally. Yeah, no piece can end on the same spot as the opponent's pieces. How do you capture? By occupying all squares of your color around one piece (4 on center, 3 on edge, 2 on corner). You win whenthe opponent has less than 4 pieces. I never really had the opportunity to try it out, so it probably needs balancing, but it sounds somewhat fun to me.
True, but trying to run Stockfish in a browser would be quite slow. If it helps, I've added another hundred or so pre-generated boards to the Github page. If you want to play Good Chess, that should hold you over for a while: github.com/jsettlem/chess-but-good/tree/master/boards
This is a very interesting idea, but how about this easier one: have a strong chess engine play itself for, say 15 moves, starting from the standard position. Then turn it over to two human players to take over. The result is an essentially random starting position with black and white roughly equal, and the opening book theory has been removed from the human equation. Voila! I call it "Deep Chess", after my name, and also for the idea that the human players are starting "deep" in a standard game.
@@michael9433 If you want to have fun with it you could have it randomly pick a matchup between two (decently close) engines from ELO World. You're in for a hell of a time if your engine was WorstFish.
Were this for a serious chess player I can see this being terrible. For a game of complete amateurs/non serious players? I feel like this would be freaking hilarious and fun. I play by feel and instinct more than anything. I rarely super deeply consider moves (I enjoy speed chess most for a reason), and this feels like it would take a lot of the tedium I find in chess out of it. Make me parse the board but run on feel.
Amateurs is an understatement, because an amateur player can have a rating of up to 2000 FIDE. I can see this being fun to 700s and below, for anyone who's more invested in the game, this would feel so fucking bullshit
@@suezuccati304 denote the "non-serious" after "complete amateurs". I was referring to someone who *couldn't care less* what their FIDE score is or whatever. THAT kind of amateur. From the outside, if you know what FIDE even is, you are very likely among the serious players that I was talking about who would hate it. So congratulations for confirming my suspicion.
The "problems" stated in the video are already able to be counteracted though. To cancel white advantage, play a multi game match switching sides. To counter theory, just play with other people of your level so that it becomes a moot point.
Me before: Stereotypes are wrong, so it’s not true that chess nerds don’t understand irony and humour, and are patronising dillweeds. Me reading this comment section just looking for more goofy chess variants: Oh. Gonna rethink my position on stereotyping people I guess.
1. Stereotypes exist because they're more often than not true 2. What comments are you looking at? I can't find any that are straight-up bickering 3. If you're still looking for cool chess variants, my favourite has to be chess on a really big board (aka really big chess) by Ralph Betza
@@LARAUJO_0 there's basically 3 common kinds of steretypes: true, usually true, and totally made up bullshit. There's different dynamics behind the different kinds.
I say get rid of the middle-men. I present to you Laissez-Chess: both players use their life savings to buy a chess supercomputer that will play for them. GMs will likely find it more productive to outsource the choosing and maintaining of their computers to independent contractors, and focus on their careers instead to be able to fund more chess matches. But to be a serious contender for a title, you should probably consider bankrolling a top team of hackers to disable the energy grid supporting the other player's servers, while also fielding a couple hundred cybersoldiers to defend your chess compound from direct attacks. Then again, if the opponent simply lobbies the government to ban your crypto coin so that you can't collect farming rent from your digiserfs, you're screwed, there's no way you'll be able to fund the chess effort.
@@felicityc See, now that's bad game design for ya. If no one fights, there's no fear of losing. And in that case, what's left to drive initiative, risk-taking and COMPETITION, the mother of all virtues? How do we make players push themselves well past healthy interest into single-minded obsession? How do we ensure all the resources of our planet are exhausted in the pursuit of this one, lofty goal - the ever-growing win rates and ELOs for the shareholders of chess teams?
0.0 usually means a forced draw exists. Solution? Make it so whoever is the one forcing the draw loses. Too bad if their losing. The lower your rating, the funnier it is.
My chess variant: Chess Uno Each player makes a chess move and playing a Uno card in their turn. Game ends when any condition of victory in any of the sub games is reached.
Why limit yourself? Monopoly has an average turn count of 30 which is very similar to that of lower level chess, you could very easily do Chess-Monopoly! Or we could keep stacking, Chess-Uno-Monopoly. The choices are endless and every game we stack makes the entire thing more chaotic
I'm no expert, and maybe this is nothing new - but I think it could be interesting if players make their moves at the same time, say, by writing it down in secret and committing to it once both plays are revealed. The strategy would be to anticipate what play the other player is going to make based on the board state, and to hopefully counter their move with your own - but knowing that they may anticipate your counter and therefore counter your counter, meaning you should make a different play entirely that counters their counter to your counter....you get the idea. The more I think about it, the more I feel like it's not even really all that different from a normal game of chess. Under ordinary chess rules, you're making your move just after your opponent has made a move - and with the simultaneous plays, you are doing exactly the same thing. They previously made a move, and you are making a move which follows that move. It's just, they are also doing the same thing at the same time. I feel like what it will mostly result in is people making plays they would NOT have made if they saw their opponent's "next" move (in this case, the simultaneous move) first, because knowing their plans with absolute certainty would change their own plans. So someone who might have had more of an advantage by knowing their opponent's next play, might find themselves at a disadvantage depending on the plays made, and someone who would have been at a disadvantage if they had to make their play before their opponent, may get the opportunity to catch them off guard and come out ahead. It would play out more like real-time strategy than turn based. I'm not saying Chess is flawed for being turn-based, that's its own kind of strategy game and completely valid. I just think the simultaneous element would make for an interesting spin on things. After writing this, I did a search, and it has been proposed as "Synchronous Chess", with rules laid out for the unusual circumstances and board states unique to simultaneous play that can't be statisfied with normal rulings. Definitely seems interesting.
@@KandiKlover You dont stream on steam, you download your games. The issue is that you dont own a physical copy, and that, just as you do with physical media, you only pay for the license to play a game. The difference in digital media is that in order to ensure that only one person plays the game, rather than being safe knowing that one copy of a disc = 1 game, you need to make some sort of DRM to buy the games, which really gets in the way. Either way, physical or digital, you are still technically only buying a license to play the game, but physical media still theoretically lasts longer because there isnt a reliance on a service that may die in the future.
@@LukeOrionMarble Well no. You don't download a complete game. You always need to be connected to steam in order to play your games. Steam would be out of business if you could just download a full game and then share copies online. You don't even know how steam works...
this reminds me of when I worked in a daycare and I'd play "Really Terrible Chess" with the kids, where each side would still have the same starting position in the closest 2 rows but the pieces completely randomized. when playing with kids who often need to ask how the different pieces work, it's perfect for just doing something dumb and seeing how it goes
Hey I just stumbled upon your video, but I actually play a similar variation with friends. But we only use random equal positions (-2 to +2) from Master games which ended decisively. This avoids the opening theory issue without losing the general structures of normal chess. We call it Master Chess, and it's seriously a lot of fun.
In college, I created "Gambler's" chess. Rules: 1. Each turn, starting with the white pieces, roll a d6 to determine how many moves can be made consecutively. 2. A player may stop before they've completed the allowed number of moves (a player must make at least one move per turn, or forfeit the game, there is no stalemate from inability to move). 3. Unused moves are "checked". Every two turns, all "checked" moves become "banked", and may be "spent" to reduce an opponent's roll (to a minimum of 1). Every five turns, "banked" moves become "invested" and may be "sold" to increase a roll (to a maximum of 6). 4. A player may only move one piece each turn. 5. If the opposing king enters check, the current turn ends, no matter how many moves remained (extra moves are "checked"). 6. At the end of the game, the winner claims an agreed currency amount (usually $1-2) per "invested" point they had when the game ended. 7. All other rules as normal. Invented at a party, so it's pretty incomplete. Give it a go, I'm sure you'll have a blast, even if you aren't super into chess.
alright hear me out... the board setup is normal HOWEVER: -pawns move diagonally and take up to 2 spaces forward. (first move can move 2 spaces) -king moves any number of spaces in any direction (like a queen) -rook moves up to 3 spaces diagonally -bishop moves up to 3 spaces orthogonally -knight can move to any empty space on the board, but cannot capture any pieces -the queen can move orthogonally one space at a time, up to the number of your pawns that have been captured. (example: opponent has taken 4 of your pawns, your queen can move up,left,up,up or down,right,up,right etc.) how to win: capture all your opponents pawns. (a pawn promotion counts as a pawn loss) my friend and I came up with this with the goal of making the worst variant imaginable... but it actually ended up being pretty balanced and actually fun to play.
Reminds me of a game I came up with a while ago... Was called sth like "SurroundChess". Basically, you setup the board by putting the 8 pawns on row 2 and 3, on squares of their color. Then on the 4 squares of your color on first line, you place 4 pieces of your choice (each poece has different moves and things like that I won't explain here). So, white pieces on white squares, and black pieces on black squares. Then, here's the actual catch: all pieces csn only move diagonally. Yeah, no piece can end on the same spot as the opponent's pieces. How do you capture? By occupying all squares of your color around one piece (4 on center, 3 on edge, 2 on corner). You win whenthe opponent has less than 4 pieces. I never really had the opportunity to try it out, so it probably needs balancing, but it sounds somewhat fun to me.
To simplify the process, two boards could be created, Player 1 plays white at board 1 and black at board 2, player 2 plays black at board 1 and white at board two, they must make a move at the two boards at the same time (if its their turn at both boards). Then they play the same thing again but now player 1 is black at board 1 and white at board 2 and vice versa. If someone wins is bigger than his loses + draws he is the winner, if no one is the winner, you generate more 2 boards and do the thing again. The two boards being played at the same time with that being done two times (instead of just one board being played two times at the same time) means you can't mirror the guy, because the second board is a different one.
When you busted out the engine, I thought you were going to suggest making whichever player has the advantage play whatever (bad) move creates the most equal position for both players. Might be interesting!
Maybe if the top 2 or 3 moves for each side also evaluate close to 0.0, it's more playable? If the goal is to get away from theory though, you can keep a lot more chess ideas intact with a variant like 3-bans, where you can ban a specific move for your opponent at the end of your turn, up to 3 times per game. Now you can reach positions that GMs would never play into willingly.
I like the idea of using the chess engine to look into the future to determine that no one player should have a superior position after three moves. I could see a book being published with some 250+ sample boards. Where each board in theory should lead to a balanced opening position. It would be cool if subsequent books were published where one side had an advantage. Like the next book in the series all the openings have a .9-1.1 imbalance. That way you could play withsome at a greater skill rank while the lower ranked player gets a handicapped.
I tried playing this with friends but they all attempted to hang, strangle, poison and/or stab me which is odd since I’d never met any of them before and they showed up a day after a large scale asylum break out in my area.
There was one time I was in college and we were playing chess a lot. And we decided to do something kind of like this. We made two people who didn’t know how to play chess to randomly place the pieces on the board. The only rules were they you could not place someone in check at the start of the game and couldn’t have bishops on the same color of square. There was no planning and wow! It was awesome!
That actually sounds more intimate, like it's your own personal game of chess. You and your opponent may well be the only ones to ever face off using the setup you come up with in the way that you do. You might even choose to intentionally give advantage or disadvantage to one side or another to balance it for both players' skill level or maybe even for some other reason. Perhaps to send some subtle message to your opponent. Maybe have the number mean something to both of you and take turns on each side. The permutations and uses for this and similar formats are pretty broad, really.
One of my favorite chess variants is Loka, but it requires 4 players and I don’t have any friends. Before the game starts, players choose teams for a 2v2 game on a specialized board. (A 6x6 grid in the middle with 3x6 rectangles coming off each side). Players begin before the game by discussing strategy (they can’t later) and “buying” their pieces. Players get 27 points worth of pieces to buy and you can’t know your enemies’ pieces before hand (pawns=1, bishop/knight=3, rook=5, queen=9, and king=0). Players sit opposite their teammates, then to start the game each player takes a random tile from a bag of special spaces and places it randomly on the board by rolling 2d6’s to determine the placement. (Each tile does different things like a mountain pass that can only be passed in one direction but not the other for example) Then players take turns placing their pieces, starting with their lowest cost piece(I think, it might be highest it’s been a while) and placing it in their 3x6 starting area. Going around until everyone has finished placing all their pieces. There is one special move you can make which is if your pawn and your teammate’s pawn are blocking each other you can swap their spaces as a pawn move. Next players start playing like normal chess but with customized setups and piece counts and a board that has special spaces on it, with one major exception: capturing pieces is literally a roll of the dice. In order to capture a piece you first need to “calculate” the advantage/disadvantage of your capturing piece. The defender has +1 for defending, then whichever piece is worth more points also gets +1, then for each piece the attacker has that could capture the piece, the attacker gets +1(this includes your teammate’s pieces) and the defender gets +1 for each piece they or their teammate has that could take your piece if you capture. Then based on your advantage/disadvantage you roll dice of varying sizes and the higher number wins (0=D4, 1=D6, 2=D8, 3=D12, 4+=D20, yes they skip D10) with the defender winning in a tie. If the attacker wins, the defending piece is captured and they move their piece to the space, if they lose their own piece is removed and the defender stays where it was. So capturing involves risk of failure and incorporates the piece’s rank and the board state. Checkmate doesn’t exist, you have to actually capture the kings which removes the player from the game. When one team is left they win
"Chess, but good", "good chess" for short, also known as "holy SHIT! Why do i keep rolling an occupied spot?!?", "setup the board: the game" and "god damnit...it's 3 am already? We just started!..."
Cool idea, but fatal flaw: "The most balanced position according to an engine" has a high chance of actually being a terrible position to play. It could have an immediate forced draw, and, even if it doesn't the engine assumes best play from both sides and gives no consideration to the difficulty of finding said best moves. Also, on rare occasion, engines are just wrong. You are not the only person considering variants for improving chess at all. This is something the whole world is working on. Thanks for your contribution, though.
Here's an idea for a chess variant. To eliminate the advantage white has, you both write down your move on a Yu-Gi-Oh card. Both of you then flip the card up while exclaiming, "I ACTIVATE MY TRAP CARD." You may choose not to move, thereby saving your trap card for a later turn; as long as you have enough trap cards saved up, you may play as many of them as you want per turn. Winner gets the loser's yugioh cards and chess pieces.
I really like the simple option of just letting everyone move at the same time. It's a bit hard to do in person but it eliminates 1st turn advantage, and even creates opportunities for interesting plays since you can potentially 'dodge' a piece getting taken if you predict your opponent's move
Okay but adding chance mechanics to chess, essentially gambling on what moves you think are likely for your opponent to play, is completely antithetical to what chess is it. Like, if you want that kind of game, why even play chess
I can tell this is a joke video and a very fun one at that! But I can share some insight with my limited chess skill/knowledge which you may find interesting as I'm starting to get back into the game, lol! White's first turn advantage is so slight it's negligible to humans. In fact, I have a strong hunch that if computers ever solved Chess ("Solved" is a term of knowing what the best move for every scenario is so you can know the outcome of any game), it would likely be a draw. The reason is because even if you trade pieces equally, the advantage keeps narrowing more and more as the board opens up. A lot of computer chess matches (AI vs AI) end up drawing actually. That advantage number is even called "centipawn" or measured by 1/100 of a pawn but there's really no such thing in-game. It's more of a positional advantage. White's starting position is often evaluated by chess AI at the 0.33 to 0.77 range so that is not even a full pawn. Centipawn measurements are only really useful for CPUs as no human can outperform the best chess AIs and even the best AIs will lose as white when playing themselves. Another thing about that slight difference in advantage is it has a way of making players play differently. For instance, if you were black and mirroring the opponent's moves, they'd eventually be able to strike because of the predictability. But playing counters to their moves and looking for opportunity would yield a much more favorable result. A computer analysis of a position listed as equal isn't necessarily an equal game. Sometimes in order to stay equal, you have to play a certain (and maybe exact) way and it's much more of a puzzle to a human than it is to a Chess AI. It could be argued that it's still player fault, but some positions are just simply clearer than others to visualize for a side. Example: If black could simply take a queen from turn 1 with a pawn but white had to play a specific series of moves to trap black's queen from the starting position. Same piece advantage, but a MUCH lower chance of white seeing the moves. I know little about openings and I noticed it doesn't seem to matter. They seem to be more of a teaching tool to explain why players figured out why they do this or that in certain scenarios. What openings are considered "optimal" still have counters or unexpected moves to change your plan for. This could also be said about a lot of things in chess as there's not just one solution to every problem. In fact, your opening could go off-kilter by your opponent simply recognizing your book opening and putting something at a key square ahead of time. Even if you could follow a book opening to a tee, after you reach a certain point it's all on you to figure out the rest anyway.
In response to this video, I created my own stupid form of chess that I call: RNG Chess You do normal chess with a D20 that determines whether you get to move. The only numbers that matter are 1 and 20. 1 means you lose a turn, 20 gets you an extra turn. Everything in between just means you move as normal. Now unfortunately, that's not balanced or complicated enough, so here's some extra rules: If you roll a 20, you do your first move as normal, but your second move **has** to be your king. Also, if you roll a 1 or a 20, you don't roll for two turns after that. What do you think?
you can create your own chess variants in chesscraft. its a mobile game. Chess variants in chesscraft can have custom board shape, promotions in any square or even custom pieces with custom movements.
The flaw in your plan is that White's first move advantage is not because of an open board state. The first movie vintage is the fact that white is always one piece ahead of black unless he loses 2 to 3 pieces. White is always able to think one move ahead of black and is usually one piece ahead throughout the entire game. This is what we mean by first movie advantage Stopping when you hit a zero on the d10 when one side has more pieces than another still exacerbates the problem even more. As one side will usually get more pieces the more pieces do equal more strength on the board
There was one site I remember seeing where you get to play a randomized chess variant with a stranger, and one of the initial selection was "Kung Fu Chess", which was just chess but real time. It got removed because the server it was running on couldn't update fast enough, and so there was no form of defensive play to work with when one side could checkmate you before your side even updates to show the threat.
Wait this actually seems really cool. Unfortunately a tied position could just be one mistake away from a very lopsided position, humans can't see the move that keeps you tied
Some ideas to make it more gooder: 1. No piece can be threatening or threatened by an enemy piece at start. (So games don't start with a set of boring, obligatory captures) 2. Pawns cannot start in the last 3 rows. (So they don't promote too fast) OR All pieces must start on their half of the board. (Mostly so the position isn't too complex to read) 3. Kings must start in the backmost row. (So games less often have a series of checks early on)
I don't have anything of note to say, but I appreciate the push towards those engagement metrics. Even hate comments are good to the all-knowing algorithm.
This appeals to me. A chaotic starting point, two players that aren't proficient in chess, trying to figure out which aggressive play is least likely to backfire horribly... this could be my new party game with friends, especially after a beer or two. It's like Smash Bros with the worst items set to high. I love it.
2:40 and 2:50 really confused me how white was winning while down 14 points of material and about to get mated, then I realised at 2:50 black has a pawn instead of the queen that had the white king in check
The problem isn't "who goes first" is that whoever goes first has an advantage. Since a player must always go first, then the advantage seems unavoidable.
2:22 there is a queen instead of the pawn, so either this position is illegal, or white is checkmated. btw setting up the board by hand would probably take literal days. Btw why would white have an advantage? There is no such thing as a slight advantage. Either you win, you lose, or you draw. And I highly doubt White has a forced checkmate from the starting position. Also, stockfish is far from perfect (it's pretty easy to beat), and even if it was, it would still be likely to give you a position where only a complicated stalemate/perpetual check can force a draw, and you are otherwise losing. And if you don't find it (which you probably won't if it's complicated enough), the winner is basically decided by RNG.
As we learned more and more about Chess we know that's one version of a program doesn't give accurate evaluation it's just the closest estimate has a Time
Hmmm, breaking first player advantage. What if the game let you take two moves at once, except for three first move of the first player? What if the second player was given an extra pawn at the center of the board? What if the board was made non-euclidean such that moves from the white side to the black side are 10% slower?
I've tried a game with a regular opponent. I set up a double randomised 960 set up - both sides are randomised separately, or I just set each side up arbitrarily to be different, but within 960 rules. We then look at the board. My opponent gets to decide: either take which side they'd prefer, or go first. I take the other side and go first, or I take either side but go 2nd, respectively. I like asymmetrical games and this works.
When I was a kid my friends and I came up with GoChess, basically it worked like backwards crazy house: both players start with just a king, you can place a piece or move a piece on your turn anywhere on your first 4 ranks, or anywhere in the 7 ranks closest to you once you placed all of your pawns.
Wouldn't you be able to balance the 1st player advantage by simply following the "Hearthstone example"? In other words, player 2 gets a slight advantage (in Hearthstone, it's an extra coin). Simply let player 2 move 2 pawns on their first turn, and only on their first turn. They can't move any knights/bishops/etc. By the end of player 1's second turn, there is now an equal number of pawns moved.
Another way of doing this, is follow the setup. Plug into chess engine. Then do the best moves for the LOSING player, and do a shit move, for the winning player, until the score is more even. Then that is your starting state. Much quicker than doing 100 setups :D
If this was actually to be taken seriously (and not just a silly joke), this would be a much better idea, as this process would rapidly make the position look a lot more "natural", as the losing side starts putting their pieces on much more logical squares.
Chess960 I believe is a better mix as it no longer has the predetermined metas like Chess, but feels pretty even. This would be good for playing with a friend because your difference of skill isn't the only focus so curbstomps aren't the worst anymore since you can still have fun with the new setup. It might be fun to watch people competitively for a short time but because competitive needs a foundation it won't last for long.
Normal chess start White does 1 move Then black does 2 moves White does 2 moves And the rest of the game instead of one move each the players do 2 moves That would level the playing field I wonder what would happen to strategies Edit: player can't move same piece twice
You need to check out Regimental Chess. If it's an upgraded chess experience you're looking for, that'll occupy you for a long time... (NOTE: the online version is defunct. Hopefully we can get a physical/recoded edition!)
More balanced doesn't automatically mean better. Even though White has a slight advantage in chess, most games at the Master level and up still end in a draw. Take that advantage away, and you will see a lot more draws. Also, there is no "battle". The beauty of chess is that it simulates a war, with both sides making strategic advances and flanks, taking control of as much territory as possible, ultimately leading to a bloodbath of exchanges and sacrifices that hopefully give the advantage to one side. If you start the game in the middle of the battle, you remove the entire buildup of tension, and peppering the board randomly with peices makes for a very odd, ugly, unnatural position. Lastly, chess is a game that is very easy to setup, no complicated programs required. Introducing a computer into the setup process can create problems. Of course, there is the problem of having a computer handy, which may not be a problem using smartphones to setup only a couple games. But what if you are organizing a tournament with perhaps hundreds of games? And how can both players of a game be 100% sure the starting position is actually fair (unknown and even)? Edit: Whatever, it's a joke, gg, still gonna leave this up though since it's true
I'm a 2k fide rated player and there's lot wrong with the ideas in "chess, but good"
1. Starting positions that register as the most balanced, 0.00 can and probably often are threefold repetition draws. It's more likely that one side will be down in material but can force a draw than randomly placed pieces happen to be at 0.00 eval.
2. Just because an engine evaluated the position as equal doesn't mean it is equal for humans. There are a ton of positions that register as equal but every GM would rather play one side because that is the only side that can make progress, while the other side can only defend, or one side has only one hard-to-find path that leads to equality, while the other side can play whatever they want. It happens fairly often in chess.
3. Chess openings shouldn't be viewed as a barrier of entry but as a means to get to a middlegame that both players have played into. The opening is just a bus that takes you to an interesting position already. When you run out of opening prep, what you're left with is an interesting position. If you're facing an opponent that's better than you, he might win in the opening by knowing theory, but if he knows that much more theory than you, he probably would have crushed you anyways. Plus, theory is so impossibly diverse that the vast majority of games are different by move 10, and it's vastly diminishing returns to learn a lot of theory. You can get to 2000 by learning virtually no opening theory, as I have done.
4. The position created is so chaotic, it only is fun for tactical players. If you are more positionally minded which is half of all ideas in chess, then it takes some of it out for you. There's no pawn structures, you can have two same colour bishops. Beautiful positional ideas like bishop pairs and minority attacks and backwards pawns and weak squares and forcing outposts are just thrown out the window.
5. The half point advantage is imbalanced, but it dissuades the two sides from behaving similar to each other. Black generally plays aggressive and there can be some great imbalanced positions like Evans gambit, smith morra, najdorf, Marshall gambit, grunfeld, KID etc. It's kind of like Ts vs CTs in CS:GO, unbalanced but still fun to play both sides. I have met people who like playing black more than playing white. Plus, if you play chess anywhere online or over the board, they alternate white and black.
Overall, I get the feeling you are not much of a chess player and more a mathematician or coder. I am a CS major myself, so I get the beauty of randomizing the pieces, but it just doesn't work for my chess mind. Maybe it's a fun alternative game for people who have never played chess, but not many chess players would enjoy your variant.
Thanks for reading my long ass feedback/criticism, I meant no offence, so please don't take any.
Brilliant! See, all my friends told me this was a terrible idea, and at some intuitive level I knew it was too, but none of us are actually good enough at Chess to articulate why; thus the more jokey tone of this video.
That being said, I did anticipate point one, and the actual script disqualifies positions that evaluate to exactly zero. It was easy enough to tell just by watching Stockfish play itself that they were all dead games.
Personally, I genuinely prefer to play Good Chess over normal Chess, but I've honestly hardly played much of either. 😁 The real joy to me is how robust the UCI protocol for chess engines is and how much you can get away with doing very little coding. It's fun to tweak the parameters and see what sorts of different results you can get. One thing that I think could be fun would be generating unbalanced boards, or even ones with forced mates, and seeing if you can beat Stockfish from that advantageous position. Since this video was meant to be mostly a joke I didn't want to go into too much nuance like that, but maybe at some point I'll make a follow-up.
Thanks for the fantastic analysis. It's great to have as a reference!
pimanrules no problem. I would suggest picking up chess as a hobby if you're not too busy with other stuff. It is my favourite game and appeals to the logical and analytical mind. Many chess players are mathematicians and software developers.
kevin chen many mathematicians and software developers are also alcoholics that prefer not to think on downtime.
Some things in life are quasi-transitive. Programming is a hobby for many of us. It’s just coincidence in life to turn hobby into profession (like playing chess).
W Hoeltermann hey, many chess players are alcoholics too! Don't think mathematicians have a monopoly on alcoholism
the only thing i don't agree with as a 1500 Glicko2 player: "but if he knows that much more theory than you, he probably would have crushed you anyways."/ Personally i lost a lot of games against friends because of not knowing opening book. But when i started to play 1.h4 i started to win. That shows that (my friends at least) they were gaining advantage not through calculation. Loosing main path and they are lost. And i believe that applies to most of
Change “Chess But Good” into “Chess But Terrible”, for the only real reason being changing the acronym into CBT
that’s what I feel trying to play this
cock and ball torture
Chess and Board Torture
@@invenblocker check and bishop torture
but... it is good! thus, i suggest a new name, Chess But Terrific!
As an additional houserule, every time you lose a piece, you get decked in the nuts by your opponent.
This video is just a trap for chess players that can't take a joke lol, he even trashed the idea on the video
I was gonna say the same thing. This is a fun example of a numbers trap. "Statistically better" doesn't always mean better end results.
A personal example I used to experience a lot was in Destiny 2. My buddies I used to play with would say "Ok, everybody use X weapon because it has the highest theoretical damage on this fight." In this case we'll just say Whisper of the Worm. It's a sniper rifle that can do some of the highest damage in the game, If you can land 3 consecutive shots on a weak point in quick succession. If you can't, it does less DPS than a lot of other weapons just spraying a non weak point.
I would then tell them, "I am terrible with sniper rifles, I would do much more damage with weapon Y instead. Weapon Y even ignores some of the bosses mechanics and would do close to Whisper's optimal damage"
They would ignore me, because statistically the Whisper can do more. If I used the weapon I was better with, even if they all died on their own long before me by being out of position, it would be my fault we lost because "I was holding the DPS back", regardless of what the damage charts said or them just standing in the red circles. They would be blinded by statistics instead of results. If I used the Whisper and they wiped, they would blame themselves. I even actually secretly tested them by not shooting during a fight at all, and they didn't notice a damn thing. They just wanted me to have that gun in my hands because it was "statistically better".
Yeah, the video is hilarious, but the overly-serious replies are even funnier.
Does anyone think he's seriously proposing rolling dice thousands of times every time you want to play a game?
I believe the term is "idiot test"
wait its all a joke??
OK i was about to start going to thearapy again but if its a joke this would not be such a bad Idea for a chess variant
This is what chess is about. Being fun and creative. I used to mess around with weird piece arrangements with friends at school chess club all the time.
As someone who enjoys all forms of Random Battles in Pokemon Showdown, I see no way this could possibly go wrong
As someone who prefers Pokemon Showdown 1v1s, I say we just take the first position made by the dice and play Rock-Paper-Scissors for it
@@LazarNaskov why not skip the rock-paper-scissors entirely - I’ll bet you $0.99 I can roll higher on a d6 than you can!
@@snoozbuster time and place
Nice.
The difference is random battles work for Pokemon. But this is just stupid
One chess variant I recently learned about is called fog of war, where you can only see squares that your pieces can move to. It sounds like it would be very drawish with neither players really making any progress without good information about the board, but what I really love is it introduces a whole other layer to the game that is incredibly interesting: bluffs. You could throw one of your minor pieces straight into the heart of an enemy position without being defended in any way, but your opponent has to decide whether or not he believes the piece is defended or if the attack is real.
Damn, this sounds cool. Where can I find it?
@@edwardnygma8533 it’s on chess.com
So Chess but with a pinch of Poker Luck?
@@danielsurvivor1372 pretty much
@@Docwell chess is basically pure strategy, memorization doesn't get you anywhere unless you are on an extremely high level where you basically have to know every opening.
Those play testers sounded like they were held at gun point, and still couldn't get themselves to approve of this being the superior chess, which I just think is hilarious
The reason why this isn't the greatest innovation to chess in the last hundred years is that someone already made 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel (Yes, that is a real thing)
Shame it didn't get as popular as it should have
@@Some.username.idk.0 I think the main issue is that
1: Queens are OP. Like, i get theyre strong in normal chess, but in 5D chess, they are just downright broken and should be killed at the first opportunity, no matter the cost, as they will fuck you up. Look up the Terminator Gambit for more details.
2: Time travel, most of the time, isn't really worth it. Often times, time travelling is worth more to your opponent than to you when you do it.
@@Chrischi3TutorialLPs Time travel having its drawbacks kind of works since it forces you to work out the most advantageous way to use it (or just get forced to play out a softmate), however the game is kind of boring when both players completely ignore any time travel options, which only discards a few good move options here or there, and makes it much easier to play on a timer.
Queens absolutely need the nerf though. Unchecked 3 and 4 dimensional movement is beyond busted and guaranteed to dominate the board. They turn every other piece that isn't the King into an afterthought by comparison.
@@Chrischi3TutorialLPs I created a chess gambit in 5D chess. I call it the "Back to the Future Gambit"
@@Chrischi3TutorialLPs ua-cam.com/video/8mJcyK9b01I/v-deo.html
How about making a new version of chess called *"Chess: Git Gud"* where you do everything for your variant of chess except choose the board with the largest advantage. Then pit amateurs against masters with that handicap.
So Odds Chess but randomized?
It would be mate in 2 or 1.... not really interestinng
genius
Introducing, 5 player chess:
-Arrange 5 chess boards into a cross
-The first 4 teams (White, Black, Red and Blue) start with the standard configuration of pieces each at the far ends of the cross
-Team 5 consists of 4 queens occupying the center of the cross, with an alternate lose condition (the loss of all 4 queens). If this is too heavily balanced against team 5, also give them 4 knights which can be arranged in any starting position in which they are adjacent to one of their queens
Someone make a video on this please
This sounds epic
Now I need to see that
This might be a thing because pretty sure a video like that was on my recommendation
I might be tripping tho
Edit:NVM I wasn't tripping but it was 4 players
ua-cam.com/video/poBJpzGVLXg/v-deo.html
How a Check works on this game? I mean, generally check mates are a game over, nit on those rules, as soon as one king is blocked, the game continues anyway. What would happen?
There's a board game called "combate" here in brazil. (Translates to combat, but I don't know if the game is called that anywhere else)
Both players set up their boards and then they gotta capture the enemy flag. Simple enough. But, the thing is that the other player doesn't know what any of your guys are, because they all look exactly the same from 1 side.
So, we can adapt this to chess,
- everything looks like a pawn, and can move like a pawn (including bishops and knights, yes),
- if the piece isn't an actual pawn, at any point you can use it's regular movement instead of a pawn move(the piece will still look like a pawn, but you did give away what it actually is, probably)
- all pieces can move sideways one square at a time (because I think that makes it more interesting)
- you may castle once, using the pieces in the regular positions of the king and rook, regular castling rules apply, except, the pieces don't have to be the king and rook, just be in the correct positions.
- pieces can only capture with their normal moves.(so your knight and rook, can't capture diagonally like a pawn).
I think this has potential to be quite fun. Now to test it... hopefully...
it's called "stratego" in the US and it is pretty fun! would be interested to see if this approach is interesting in chess
Here in Italy is called "Stratego" and it's a bit different.
The pieces for the other player are all the same and almost all of them move like a pawn, but they are military ranks (general, captain, private, ecc...). Every rank has a number and when you want to capture a piece both players reveal their rank for that piece, the highest number captures the other. The goal is to capture the enemy flag (that has 0 as number)
@@Bugauanga it's exactly that.
and the rank 1 spy is the only one that can kill the rank 10.
rank 3 disarms the bombs...
@@alicepbg2042 exactly! I love it
yooo this sounds sick, I'd play this any time
I'm also triggered into a reply because it really is so close to a good idea, while also hilariously demonstrating the folly of "getting rid of the opening theory" approach that 960 and others try to accomplish. Many chess enthusiasts would agree that the opening is one of three pillars of chess and can be at least equally exciting as middle and endgame. Your endgame is all about technical precision, but your opening repertoire reflects your personality - it is your signature - it puts a personal touch on an otherwise sterile zero-sum game; having this vast amount legitimate ways to start the game is the very reason why chess is such an captivating game for centuries. At intermediate level, trying to manipulate your opponent playing into an opening that you want also has a strategic depth that is entirely distinct from the other stages in the game. However, studying all this theory can be tedious and at the highest level, when two super GM's are banging out up to 25 moves from memory, it alienates the game from spectators who don't have time or the interest to keep up with the latest GM meta in the QGD.
So I think inventing new variants could be a hit in the online chess tournament scene and really benefit the game - but only if we find the middle ground between infinite possibility of totally random positions crap and classic setup. For instance, suppose you had a table of nine starting positions - all of which are designed by a GM/game designer, so they are interesting, balanced and aesthetically pleasing - then, and after each season of the tournament there will be a new set of positions. It would create a competitive space where the best players will try to develop the best theory in the limited time frame before the ladder resets; also would be a incubator for playtesting new positions that are interesting enough to become variants on their own.
Lol don't get ahead of yourself... Your opening preparation only showcases your memorization, not your personality lol
@@KARTIKEYA007 You choose what to memorize though. You can play something closed and safe, or you can play something open and risky.
I can't find a source for it, but I seem to remember something about how checkers tournaments used to do this, forcing players to randomly choose an opening for their game, as "play as you please" was extremely drawish.
@@AndrewBlechinger specifically, checkers from the default starting position is a solved game to a draw, so in order for games to consistently have winners and losers, a set of randomized starts needs to be made.
@@binarycat1237 No, it doesn't reflect your personality. It's simple, if you have spent more time grilling your tactics than your opponent then u will choose tactical positions while if it's the opposite then u will instead play a slav.
Chess has NOTHING to do with someone's personality
Alternative Idea - Chesstego
So named for its resemblance to the game Stratego.
Begin with an empty board. Players can place their pieces on the board in any arrangement they like among the back three rows. Play then proceeds as normal, white to move first.
There are two variants to explore, and I am curious how each would impact the relative 'fairness' of the opening positions.
A) Blind Chesstego - Place an obstruction between the two sides so that neither player can see the other players' board while setting up. Players set up simultaneously. When both are done, the move the obstruction and begin play as normal. In this method, players are likely to have 'favorite arrangements' that they prefer to play from, which will then clash in glorious battle when the board is revealed.
B) Active Chesstego - Players can see the pieces being placed. White places first, but do not simple-alternate. Instead, players place pieces in the 'fair share sequence' for reduce advantage:
WBBW BWWB BWWB WBBW BWWB WBBW WBBW BWWB
Since there are 32 pieces to place, a power of two, the sequence produces a mathematically 'fair' result in dividing up the value associated with the action of placing a piece. Since the players can openly see what the other is doing, it creates a sort of reactive 'pseudo-opening', where players may have their preferred starting arrangements, but can be flexible as they see their opponent's arrangement taking shape against them.
In both cases, any advantage in the resulting board state arises purely from the relative skill and experience of the players, rather than from arbitrary factors.
Each player has 24!/(8!8!2!2!2!) ~= 47.7 trillion possible starting positions. (24 spaces to arrange, with the 8 open spaces interchangeable, the 8 pawns interchangeable, as well as the 2 rooks, 2 bishops, and 2 knights); thus there are ~2.276x10^27 possible board starts. This is comparable in magnitude to the number of reachable board states after at least 24 total moves - similar to a 12 move opening from both players. If a program could analyze one board per nanosecond, it would take over 2x10^18 seconds (63 billion years) to fully map out the advantage grid, so it will generally come down to skill, experience, and personal preference; the true.
You're right in that players will be able to use existing chess theory in Blind Chesstego. The first idea I had that doesn't break the fourth-rank restriction is the Sodium Attack for white (so named for the first move: 1. Na3 2. c3 3. Nc2) to try to prep a pawn push to d4 once the barrier is removed. Other prep moves you can just plop down would be e3, Be2, Nf3, and of course O-O. Good luck with your dark squared bishop though.
@@AndrewBlechinger who said you have to put a bishop in the dark squares?
Ok, so, dumb question, if we assume choice B, how is this not just moving the problem of opening theory backwards? If we assume there is an optimal setup (which I think is a fair assumption) then it's only a matter of time before players start trying to work towards that setup, in which case it's just opening theory all over again.
Now I don't think that's a problem and I think it'd be a really interesting game, but I don't think it "solves" the problem of opening theory. Unless I missed something, which is entirely possible.
@@LazarNaskov the blind variant would alleviate this somewhat; its safe to assume any optimal position would quickly be replaced by a position that counters it. strategies with no hard counters would be ideal, and while it would still build to a metagame (there's going to be better positions still) it wouldn't be as set as chess opening positions. Plus, unpredictability would play a role; a player who does something you don't expect could push that advantage.
I love it. Already saved your comment to try it later. I have my own version too, quute different and never really playtested, so maybe unbalanced, but here it is:
Basically, you setup the board by putting the 8 pawns on row 2 and 3, on squares of their color. Then on the 4 squares of your color on first line, you place 4 pieces of your choice (each poece has different moves and things like that I won't explain here). So, white pieces on white squares, and black pieces on black squares.
Then, here's the actual catch: all pieces csn only move diagonally. Yeah, no piece can end on the same spot as the opponent's pieces. How do you capture? By occupying all squares of your color around one piece (4 on center, 3 on edge, 2 on corner). You win whenthe opponent has less than 4 pieces.
I never really had the opportunity to try it out, so it probably needs balancing, but it sounds somewhat fun to me.
You know, a website that does everything for you would be better
True, but trying to run Stockfish in a browser would be quite slow. If it helps, I've added another hundred or so pre-generated boards to the Github page. If you want to play Good Chess, that should hold you over for a while:
github.com/jsettlem/chess-but-good/tree/master/boards
@@pimanrules thanks for the Lichess links
This is a very interesting idea, but how about this easier one: have a strong chess engine play itself for, say 15 moves, starting from the standard position. Then turn it over to two human players to take over. The result is an essentially random starting position with black and white roughly equal, and the opening book theory has been removed from the human equation. Voila! I call it "Deep Chess", after my name, and also for the idea that the human players are starting "deep" in a standard game.
This actually makes sense.
@@gamingelementalist6725 Im onboard if you replace the strong chess engines with shitty chess engines; like 200 elo chess engines
So they start ba- I mean pieces deep in the game
@@oblivionthekhajiit1155 LOL. Perhaps "pawns deep" would be a more appropriate phrase.
@@michael9433 If you want to have fun with it you could have it randomly pick a matchup between two (decently close) engines from ELO World. You're in for a hell of a time if your engine was WorstFish.
Were this for a serious chess player I can see this being terrible. For a game of complete amateurs/non serious players? I feel like this would be freaking hilarious and fun. I play by feel and instinct more than anything. I rarely super deeply consider moves (I enjoy speed chess most for a reason), and this feels like it would take a lot of the tedium I find in chess out of it. Make me parse the board but run on feel.
Amateurs is an understatement, because an amateur player can have a rating of up to 2000 FIDE.
I can see this being fun to 700s and below, for anyone who's more invested in the game, this would feel so fucking bullshit
@@suezuccati304 denote the "non-serious" after "complete amateurs". I was referring to someone who *couldn't care less* what their FIDE score is or whatever. THAT kind of amateur.
From the outside, if you know what FIDE even is, you are very likely among the serious players that I was talking about who would hate it. So congratulations for confirming my suspicion.
Not unlike 5D chess with multiverse time travel!
@@deefdragon hey i know whats fide and i seriously think this is a good idea i even invited my friend to play this with me:D
The "problems" stated in the video are already able to be counteracted though. To cancel white advantage, play a multi game match switching sides. To counter theory, just play with other people of your level so that it becomes a moot point.
Me before: Stereotypes are wrong, so it’s not true that chess nerds don’t understand irony and humour, and are patronising dillweeds.
Me reading this comment section just looking for more goofy chess variants: Oh. Gonna rethink my position on stereotyping people I guess.
I have one with a robot piece that moves outside the board
It's weird seeing you talk about other people not understanding humor while writing like this.
@@B3Band not really
1. Stereotypes exist because they're more often than not true
2. What comments are you looking at? I can't find any that are straight-up bickering
3. If you're still looking for cool chess variants, my favourite has to be chess on a really big board (aka really big chess) by Ralph Betza
@@LARAUJO_0 there's basically 3 common kinds of steretypes: true, usually true, and totally made up bullshit. There's different dynamics behind the different kinds.
I say get rid of the middle-men. I present to you Laissez-Chess: both players use their life savings to buy a chess supercomputer that will play for them. GMs will likely find it more productive to outsource the choosing and maintaining of their computers to independent contractors, and focus on their careers instead to be able to fund more chess matches. But to be a serious contender for a title, you should probably consider bankrolling a top team of hackers to disable the energy grid supporting the other player's servers, while also fielding a couple hundred cybersoldiers to defend your chess compound from direct attacks. Then again, if the opponent simply lobbies the government to ban your crypto coin so that you can't collect farming rent from your digiserfs, you're screwed, there's no way you'll be able to fund the chess effort.
I see your Laissez-Chess and raise you Socialist Chess, where everyone gets to share the pieces and no one fights.
@@felicityc See, now that's bad game design for ya. If no one fights, there's no fear of losing. And in that case, what's left to drive initiative, risk-taking and COMPETITION, the mother of all virtues? How do we make players push themselves well past healthy interest into single-minded obsession? How do we ensure all the resources of our planet are exhausted in the pursuit of this one, lofty goal - the ever-growing win rates and ELOs for the shareholders of chess teams?
0.0 usually means a forced draw exists. Solution? Make it so whoever is the one forcing the draw loses. Too bad if their losing. The lower your rating, the funnier it is.
My chess variant: Chess Uno
Each player makes a chess move and playing a Uno card in their turn.
Game ends when any condition of victory in any of the sub games is reached.
Why limit yourself? Monopoly has an average turn count of 30 which is very similar to that of lower level chess, you could very easily do Chess-Monopoly!
Or we could keep stacking, Chess-Uno-Monopoly. The choices are endless and every game we stack makes the entire thing more chaotic
This reminded me of Chessboxing, where battlers alternated times rounds of ... you guessed it.
@@LazarNaskov that moment when you need to get out of a check whilst playing a +4 Wild Card and getting out of jail
Better yet: Each player has the choice to make a move in either Chess or Uno, but not both. That'd introduce some fun strategy in.
@@yutuberocks22 I like that!!! Good idea sir
I'm no expert, and maybe this is nothing new - but I think it could be interesting if players make their moves at the same time, say, by writing it down in secret and committing to it once both plays are revealed. The strategy would be to anticipate what play the other player is going to make based on the board state, and to hopefully counter their move with your own - but knowing that they may anticipate your counter and therefore counter your counter, meaning you should make a different play entirely that counters their counter to your counter....you get the idea.
The more I think about it, the more I feel like it's not even really all that different from a normal game of chess. Under ordinary chess rules, you're making your move just after your opponent has made a move - and with the simultaneous plays, you are doing exactly the same thing. They previously made a move, and you are making a move which follows that move. It's just, they are also doing the same thing at the same time.
I feel like what it will mostly result in is people making plays they would NOT have made if they saw their opponent's "next" move (in this case, the simultaneous move) first, because knowing their plans with absolute certainty would change their own plans. So someone who might have had more of an advantage by knowing their opponent's next play, might find themselves at a disadvantage depending on the plays made, and someone who would have been at a disadvantage if they had to make their play before their opponent, may get the opportunity to catch them off guard and come out ahead.
It would play out more like real-time strategy than turn based. I'm not saying Chess is flawed for being turn-based, that's its own kind of strategy game and completely valid. I just think the simultaneous element would make for an interesting spin on things.
After writing this, I did a search, and it has been proposed as "Synchronous Chess", with rules laid out for the unusual circumstances and board states unique to simultaneous play that can't be statisfied with normal rulings. Definitely seems interesting.
Sounds like the same principle that makes competitive Pokemon so interesting
Sounds like the main mechanic that makes Diplomacy work.
Even though there would still be using some elements of strategy, introducing any kind of chance to chess is antithetical to chess as a game.
How would it work if my move is to capture a piece and your move is to move that piece?
I forgot why I was subscribed to you, but now I'm glad I am.
What's wrong with the king's mating each other! HOw dareeeee you trash my beloved variant, Gay chess!
This is already a old variant called Madness chess. its even a level in the game Chess Kingdoms on steam
Steam sucks though. Could I actually own the game please instead of streaming it off a fad platform? thank you
@@KandiKlover You dont stream on steam, you download your games. The issue is that you dont own a physical copy, and that, just as you do with physical media, you only pay for the license to play a game. The difference in digital media is that in order to ensure that only one person plays the game, rather than being safe knowing that one copy of a disc = 1 game, you need to make some sort of DRM to buy the games, which really gets in the way. Either way, physical or digital, you are still technically only buying a license to play the game, but physical media still theoretically lasts longer because there isnt a reliance on a service that may die in the future.
@@KandiKlover also fads dont last for more than a decade
@@LukeOrionMarble Well no. You don't download a complete game. You always need to be connected to steam in order to play your games. Steam would be out of business if you could just download a full game and then share copies online.
You don't even know how steam works...
@@LukeOrionMarble Fads indeed do last longer than a decade lol.
You're obviously an autistic child.
What an engaging idea, sadly I don't have anyone to ~~inflict this this on~~ play with right now.
do - this - -instead-
Do it Stockfish. I been playing around with the latest 13 version and it already hits a depth of 40 in 1 minute. Thing is insane.
@Eric Lee I was pretty sure the ~ was standard markup for Reddit, Discord, etc.
Just to test, ~~tilde~~ and -minus-
@@rewrose2838 -thank you-
@@connorschultz380 You are welcome 😁
Ah yes, I see white's done the 'reverse pawn into upside-down rook' maneuver. Haven't seen that one in a while.
Reverse chainsaw into a quentin hiding in a corner
@PanCon Manteca survivor mains just flashlight blinded me when I was carrying a team-mate, how toxic!!1!1
Okay but this sounds like a lot of fun. I will be playing Good Chess™ at the next opportunity I have.
this reminds me of when I worked in a daycare and I'd play "Really Terrible Chess" with the kids, where each side would still have the same starting position in the closest 2 rows but the pieces completely randomized. when playing with kids who often need to ask how the different pieces work, it's perfect for just doing something dumb and seeing how it goes
Isn't that just 960chess?
@@Some.username.idk.0 Almost, but in 960 chess, there are further conditions that actually make that game work.
5:08 rip good chess
Hey I just stumbled upon your video, but I actually play a similar variation with friends. But we only use random equal positions (-2 to +2) from Master games which ended decisively. This avoids the opening theory issue without losing the general structures of normal chess. We call it Master Chess, and it's seriously a lot of fun.
In college, I created "Gambler's" chess.
Rules:
1. Each turn, starting with the white pieces, roll a d6 to determine how many moves can be made consecutively.
2. A player may stop before they've completed the allowed number of moves (a player must make at least one move per turn, or forfeit the game, there is no stalemate from inability to move).
3. Unused moves are "checked". Every two turns, all "checked" moves become "banked", and may be "spent" to reduce an opponent's roll (to a minimum of 1). Every five turns, "banked" moves become "invested" and may be "sold" to increase a roll (to a maximum of 6).
4. A player may only move one piece each turn.
5. If the opposing king enters check, the current turn ends, no matter how many moves remained (extra moves are "checked").
6. At the end of the game, the winner claims an agreed currency amount (usually $1-2) per "invested" point they had when the game ended.
7. All other rules as normal.
Invented at a party, so it's pretty incomplete. Give it a go, I'm sure you'll have a blast, even if you aren't super into chess.
This idea is actually interesting. I am gonna give it a go
@@rafaelgabrielgarlinidal-bo9496 How'd it go?
There is not enough alcohol in your idea
@@Ghost0fDeath1 The alcohol was implied.
alright hear me out...
the board setup is normal HOWEVER:
-pawns move diagonally and take up to 2 spaces forward. (first move can move 2 spaces)
-king moves any number of spaces in any direction (like a queen)
-rook moves up to 3 spaces diagonally
-bishop moves up to 3 spaces orthogonally
-knight can move to any empty space on the board, but cannot capture any pieces
-the queen can move orthogonally one space at a time, up to the number of your pawns that have been captured.
(example: opponent has taken 4 of your pawns, your queen can move up,left,up,up or down,right,up,right etc.)
how to win: capture all your opponents pawns.
(a pawn promotion counts as a pawn loss)
my friend and I came up with this with the goal of making the worst variant imaginable... but it actually ended up being pretty balanced and actually fun to play.
Reminds me of a game I came up with a while ago...
Was called sth like "SurroundChess".
Basically, you setup the board by putting the 8 pawns on row 2 and 3, on squares of their color. Then on the 4 squares of your color on first line, you place 4 pieces of your choice (each poece has different moves and things like that I won't explain here). So, white pieces on white squares, and black pieces on black squares. Then, here's the actual catch: all pieces csn only move diagonally. Yeah, no piece can end on the same spot as the opponent's pieces. How do you capture? By occupying all squares of your color around one piece (4 on center, 3 on edge, 2 on corner). You win whenthe opponent has less than 4 pieces. I never really had the opportunity to try it out, so it probably needs balancing, but it sounds somewhat fun to me.
To simplify the process, two boards could be created, Player 1 plays white at board 1 and black at board 2, player 2 plays black at board 1 and white at board two, they must make a move at the two boards at the same time (if its their turn at both boards). Then they play the same thing again but now player 1 is black at board 1 and white at board 2 and vice versa. If someone wins is bigger than his loses + draws he is the winner, if no one is the winner, you generate more 2 boards and do the thing again.
The two boards being played at the same time with that being done two times (instead of just one board being played two times at the same time) means you can't mirror the guy, because the second board is a different one.
this comments section has lowered my opinion of serious chess players more than anything else lmao
A way to actually make chess more equal: only give each player 1 king and no other pieces
You would need a different board to play this.
Otherwise the one defending will always win.
@@molybdaen11 I think it would only end in a draw because you can't move your king into check
"Here's what you'll need: a chess set"
Uh huh, okay
"A bag"
... for the pieces, right
"2D8s"
Wait what?
Dammit! I only have 1 D8. What kind of heretic would have 2 in their polyhedral set!!!
What Chess player doesnt have a full dice set on hand at all times?
Roll for initiative
i dont think he understood that 'mating eachother' would trigger my terrible humor
This should be called "Chess Randomizer: How to fry a chess engine"
When you busted out the engine, I thought you were going to suggest making whichever player has the advantage play whatever (bad) move creates the most equal position for both players. Might be interesting!
The Mario kart mechanic
After two weeks of work setting up the 100 boards for the analysis, I noticed I had worn the finish off all my pieces.
I absolutely adore the style of humor in this video. So dry it's nearly stale. Just like me!
Maybe if the top 2 or 3 moves for each side also evaluate close to 0.0, it's more playable?
If the goal is to get away from theory though, you can keep a lot more chess ideas intact with a variant like 3-bans, where you can ban a specific move for your opponent at the end of your turn, up to 3 times per game. Now you can reach positions that GMs would never play into willingly.
I like the idea of using the chess engine to look into the future to determine that no one player should have a superior position after three moves.
I could see a book being published with some 250+ sample boards. Where each board in theory should lead to a balanced opening position.
It would be cool if subsequent books were published where one side had an advantage. Like the next book in the series all the openings have a .9-1.1 imbalance. That way you could play withsome at a greater skill rank while the lower ranked player gets a handicapped.
I tried playing this with friends but they all attempted to hang, strangle, poison and/or stab me which is odd since I’d never met any of them before and they showed up a day after a large scale asylum break out in my area.
Finally a new chess update I've been waiting for 200 years
There was one time I was in college and we were playing chess a lot. And we decided to do something kind of like this. We made two people who didn’t know how to play chess to randomly place the pieces on the board.
The only rules were they you could not place someone in check at the start of the game and couldn’t have bishops on the same color of square.
There was no planning and wow! It was awesome!
Rocket rollerskate chess: the board is twice as large and every piece but the King goes forward 5 spaces before doing its regular movement.
This is stupid, everyone knows the _real_ good chess is FE Fates PvP.
“If they end up on the same square, or in a place where they’re mating each other”
I think that’s a bit too hot for youtube
"Wanna play chess?"
"Sure."
"Great! Let me arrange the board and call you in a month."
That actually sounds more intimate, like it's your own personal game of chess. You and your opponent may well be the only ones to ever face off using the setup you come up with in the way that you do. You might even choose to intentionally give advantage or disadvantage to one side or another to balance it for both players' skill level or maybe even for some other reason. Perhaps to send some subtle message to your opponent.
Maybe have the number mean something to both of you and take turns on each side. The permutations and uses for this and similar formats are pretty broad, really.
One of my favorite chess variants is Loka, but it requires 4 players and I don’t have any friends.
Before the game starts, players choose teams for a 2v2 game on a specialized board. (A 6x6 grid in the middle with 3x6 rectangles coming off each side). Players begin before the game by discussing strategy (they can’t later) and “buying” their pieces. Players get 27 points worth of pieces to buy and you can’t know your enemies’ pieces before hand (pawns=1, bishop/knight=3, rook=5, queen=9, and king=0).
Players sit opposite their teammates,
then to start the game each player takes a random tile from a bag of special spaces and places it randomly on the board by rolling 2d6’s to determine the placement. (Each tile does different things like a mountain pass that can only be passed in one direction but not the other for example)
Then players take turns placing their pieces, starting with their lowest cost piece(I think, it might be highest it’s been a while) and placing it in their 3x6 starting area. Going around until everyone has finished placing all their pieces. There is one special move you can make which is if your pawn and your teammate’s pawn are blocking each other you can swap their spaces as a pawn move.
Next players start playing like normal chess but with customized setups and piece counts and a board that has special spaces on it, with one major exception: capturing pieces is literally a roll of the dice. In order to capture a piece you first need to “calculate” the advantage/disadvantage of your capturing piece. The defender has +1 for defending, then whichever piece is worth more points also gets +1, then for each piece the attacker has that could capture the piece, the attacker gets +1(this includes your teammate’s pieces) and the defender gets +1 for each piece they or their teammate has that could take your piece if you capture. Then based on your advantage/disadvantage you roll dice of varying sizes and the higher number wins (0=D4, 1=D6, 2=D8, 3=D12, 4+=D20, yes they skip D10) with the defender winning in a tie. If the attacker wins, the defending piece is captured and they move their piece to the space, if they lose their own piece is removed and the defender stays where it was. So capturing involves risk of failure and incorporates the piece’s rank and the board state.
Checkmate doesn’t exist, you have to actually capture the kings which removes the player from the game. When one team is left they win
Real talk, why not just do Paper Rock Scissors at the start of chess for who goes first? That plus randomized pieces behind pawns.
That's just Chess 960..
@@brucewillards37 But without the additional restrictions.
If this is a joke it's hilarious, but if you're actually serious about this then you're kinda crazy
Don't sweat it, it's a joke.
"Chess, but good", "good chess" for short, also known as "holy SHIT! Why do i keep rolling an occupied spot?!?", "setup the board: the game" and "god damnit...it's 3 am already? We just started!..."
Lol
Late April fool joke?
@sakku the concept is fun but everyone can that this is a mess XD.
Hey, nice work man. This looks like it was a really cool project!
Good chess is the best game I’ve ever played
Please let my family go now
wait... what?
Cool idea, but fatal flaw: "The most balanced position according to an engine" has a high chance of actually being a terrible position to play. It could have an immediate forced draw, and, even if it doesn't the engine assumes best play from both sides and gives no consideration to the difficulty of finding said best moves. Also, on rare occasion, engines are just wrong. You are not the only person considering variants for improving chess at all. This is something the whole world is working on. Thanks for your contribution, though.
He excluded boards rated at exactly 0.
Here's an idea for a chess variant. To eliminate the advantage white has, you both write down your move on a Yu-Gi-Oh card. Both of you then flip the card up while exclaiming, "I ACTIVATE MY TRAP CARD." You may choose not to move, thereby saving your trap card for a later turn; as long as you have enough trap cards saved up, you may play as many of them as you want per turn. Winner gets the loser's yugioh cards and chess pieces.
I really like the simple option of just letting everyone move at the same time. It's a bit hard to do in person but it eliminates 1st turn advantage, and even creates opportunities for interesting plays since you can potentially 'dodge' a piece getting taken if you predict your opponent's move
Okay but adding chance mechanics to chess, essentially gambling on what moves you think are likely for your opponent to play, is completely antithetical to what chess is it. Like, if you want that kind of game, why even play chess
I can tell this is a joke video and a very fun one at that! But I can share some insight with my limited chess skill/knowledge which you may find interesting as I'm starting to get back into the game, lol!
White's first turn advantage is so slight it's negligible to humans. In fact, I have a strong hunch that if computers ever solved Chess ("Solved" is a term of knowing what the best move for every scenario is so you can know the outcome of any game), it would likely be a draw. The reason is because even if you trade pieces equally, the advantage keeps narrowing more and more as the board opens up. A lot of computer chess matches (AI vs AI) end up drawing actually. That advantage number is even called "centipawn" or measured by 1/100 of a pawn but there's really no such thing in-game. It's more of a positional advantage. White's starting position is often evaluated by chess AI at the 0.33 to 0.77 range so that is not even a full pawn. Centipawn measurements are only really useful for CPUs as no human can outperform the best chess AIs and even the best AIs will lose as white when playing themselves.
Another thing about that slight difference in advantage is it has a way of making players play differently. For instance, if you were black and mirroring the opponent's moves, they'd eventually be able to strike because of the predictability. But playing counters to their moves and looking for opportunity would yield a much more favorable result.
A computer analysis of a position listed as equal isn't necessarily an equal game. Sometimes in order to stay equal, you have to play a certain (and maybe exact) way and it's much more of a puzzle to a human than it is to a Chess AI. It could be argued that it's still player fault, but some positions are just simply clearer than others to visualize for a side. Example: If black could simply take a queen from turn 1 with a pawn but white had to play a specific series of moves to trap black's queen from the starting position. Same piece advantage, but a MUCH lower chance of white seeing the moves.
I know little about openings and I noticed it doesn't seem to matter. They seem to be more of a teaching tool to explain why players figured out why they do this or that in certain scenarios. What openings are considered "optimal" still have counters or unexpected moves to change your plan for. This could also be said about a lot of things in chess as there's not just one solution to every problem. In fact, your opening could go off-kilter by your opponent simply recognizing your book opening and putting something at a key square ahead of time. Even if you could follow a book opening to a tee, after you reach a certain point it's all on you to figure out the rest anyway.
In response to this video, I created my own stupid form of chess that I call:
RNG Chess
You do normal chess with a D20 that determines whether you get to move. The only numbers that matter are 1 and 20. 1 means you lose a turn, 20 gets you an extra turn. Everything in between just means you move as normal.
Now unfortunately, that's not balanced or complicated enough, so here's some extra rules: If you roll a 20, you do your first move as normal, but your second move **has** to be your king. Also, if you roll a 1 or a 20, you don't roll for two turns after that. What do you think?
I tried to do something like this with a friend when I was little but we realized that the black king started in check so we gave up on the idea
First, but I manually set up the board, calculated the fairest advantage/disadvantage positions and played the game. It was real fun.
You don’t always have to stick to a set opening. They’re just known ways to open that are good. More can be developed.
you can create your own chess variants in chesscraft. its a mobile game. Chess variants in chesscraft can have custom board shape, promotions in any square or even custom pieces with custom movements.
Missed an opportunity to call it > In Media Chess
The flaw in your plan is that White's first move advantage is not because of an open board state. The first movie vintage is the fact that white is always one piece ahead of black unless he loses 2 to 3 pieces. White is always able to think one move ahead of black and is usually one piece ahead throughout the entire game. This is what we mean by first movie advantage
Stopping when you hit a zero on the d10 when one side has more pieces than another still exacerbates the problem even more. As one side will usually get more pieces the more pieces do equal more strength on the board
Chess but godlike.
Chess but theres no turn order. Everyone goes at once.
There was one site I remember seeing where you get to play a randomized chess variant with a stranger, and one of the initial selection was "Kung Fu Chess", which was just chess but real time. It got removed because the server it was running on couldn't update fast enough, and so there was no form of defensive play to work with when one side could checkmate you before your side even updates to show the threat.
Bollwerk 178 is a very fascinating and complex chess variant.
I love how the first board generated puts both kings into check. Auto-lose condition ftw.
Wait this actually seems really cool. Unfortunately a tied position could just be one mistake away from a very lopsided position, humans can't see the move that keeps you tied
Our computers are still not good enough to be completely fair with the position, but man, good chess looks fun af
Some ideas to make it more gooder:
1. No piece can be threatening or threatened by an enemy piece at start. (So games don't start with a set of boring, obligatory captures)
2. Pawns cannot start in the last 3 rows. (So they don't promote too fast) OR All pieces must start on their half of the board. (Mostly so the position isn't too complex to read)
3. Kings must start in the backmost row. (So games less often have a series of checks early on)
I don't have anything of note to say, but I appreciate the push towards those engagement metrics. Even hate comments are good to the all-knowing algorithm.
This appeals to me. A chaotic starting point, two players that aren't proficient in chess, trying to figure out which aggressive play is least likely to backfire horribly... this could be my new party game with friends, especially after a beer or two. It's like Smash Bros with the worst items set to high. I love it.
This video feels as if Michael Reeves suddenly started liking chess.
We shouldn't trust the engines judgement on boards like those. It has either been programmed or trained to make certain assumptions that don't apply.
Tbh even if a position is theoretically equal, one of the players has more good moves than the other have, so, even if it's "equal" it won't be equal.
2:40 and 2:50 really confused me how white was winning while down 14 points of material and about to get mated, then I realised at 2:50 black has a pawn instead of the queen that had the white king in check
or just flip a coin/play rps and whoever wins goes first lol
That's how normal chess works...
@@hylthekj5927 then don't change it lmao
@@hylthekj5927 no, white always moves first in chess
@@KARTIKEYA007 yea, but who do you decide is white?
The problem isn't "who goes first" is that whoever goes first has an advantage. Since a player must always go first, then the advantage seems unavoidable.
Fun for two of my friends, my girlfriend and three other hated it. Too much chaos to them and no structure.
So it's chess but the board looks like a level from a Strategy RPG
Make it so that the two players play at the same time, like they write their move on a paper, and there you have your balanced chess
I think if you called it Battlefield Chess, it would have gained more of a chaotic vibe that people could accept.
2:22 there is a queen instead of the pawn, so either this position is illegal, or white is checkmated. btw setting up the board by hand would probably take literal days.
Btw why would white have an advantage? There is no such thing as a slight advantage. Either you win, you lose, or you draw. And I highly doubt White has a forced checkmate from the starting position. Also, stockfish is far from perfect (it's pretty easy to beat), and even if it was, it would still be likely to give you a position where only a complicated stalemate/perpetual check can force a draw, and you are otherwise losing. And if you don't find it (which you probably won't if it's complicated enough), the winner is basically decided by RNG.
As we learned more and more about Chess we know that's one version of a program doesn't give accurate evaluation it's just the closest estimate has a Time
Hmmm, breaking first player advantage.
What if the game let you take two moves at once, except for three first move of the first player?
What if the second player was given an extra pawn at the center of the board?
What if the board was made non-euclidean such that moves from the white side to the black side are 10% slower?
I've tried a game with a regular opponent. I set up a double randomised 960 set up - both sides are randomised separately, or I just set each side up arbitrarily to be different, but within 960 rules. We then look at the board. My opponent gets to decide: either take which side they'd prefer, or go first. I take the other side and go first, or I take either side but go 2nd, respectively. I like asymmetrical games and this works.
When I was a kid my friends and I came up with GoChess, basically it worked like backwards crazy house: both players start with just a king, you can place a piece or move a piece on your turn anywhere on your first 4 ranks, or anywhere in the 7 ranks closest to you once you placed all of your pawns.
Introducing Chess: Oops all Pawns, Oops all Queens, and w/ Checkers. And coming this holiday season: nondenominational holiday marshmallows
Wouldn't you be able to balance the 1st player advantage by simply following the "Hearthstone example"? In other words, player 2 gets a slight advantage (in Hearthstone, it's an extra coin). Simply let player 2 move 2 pawns on their first turn, and only on their first turn. They can't move any knights/bishops/etc.
By the end of player 1's second turn, there is now an equal number of pawns moved.
Another way of doing this, is follow the setup.
Plug into chess engine.
Then do the best moves for the LOSING player, and do a shit move, for the winning player, until the score is more even.
Then that is your starting state.
Much quicker than doing 100 setups :D
If this was actually to be taken seriously (and not just a silly joke), this would be a much better idea, as this process would rapidly make the position look a lot more "natural", as the losing side starts putting their pieces on much more logical squares.
Can we all just appreciate the #0 starting position at 3:18
Chess960 I believe is a better mix as it no longer has the predetermined metas like Chess, but feels pretty even. This would be good for playing with a friend because your difference of skill isn't the only focus so curbstomps aren't the worst anymore since you can still have fun with the new setup. It might be fun to watch people competitively for a short time but because competitive needs a foundation it won't last for long.
Next step is to climb Mt Everest and play a game of conventional chess to warm up
Normal chess start
White does 1 move
Then black does 2 moves
White does 2 moves
And the rest of the game instead of one move each the players do 2 moves
That would level the playing field
I wonder what would happen to strategies
Edit: player can't move same piece twice
I would play this. It’s close to an idea I had once, but I don’t have the programming skills to make it happen.
You need to check out Regimental Chess. If it's an upgraded chess experience you're looking for, that'll occupy you for a long time...
(NOTE: the online version is defunct. Hopefully we can get a physical/recoded edition!)
More balanced doesn't automatically mean better. Even though White has a slight advantage in chess, most games at the Master level and up still end in a draw. Take that advantage away, and you will see a lot more draws.
Also, there is no "battle". The beauty of chess is that it simulates a war, with both sides making strategic advances and flanks, taking control of as much territory as possible, ultimately leading to a bloodbath of exchanges and sacrifices that hopefully give the advantage to one side. If you start the game in the middle of the battle, you remove the entire buildup of tension, and peppering the board randomly with peices makes for a very odd, ugly, unnatural position.
Lastly, chess is a game that is very easy to setup, no complicated programs required. Introducing a computer into the setup process can create problems. Of course, there is the problem of having a computer handy, which may not be a problem using smartphones to setup only a couple games. But what if you are organizing a tournament with perhaps hundreds of games? And how can both players of a game be 100% sure the starting position is actually fair (unknown and even)?
Edit: Whatever, it's a joke, gg, still gonna leave this up though since it's true
Liked and commented just for the outro
Well played
love the solution that doesn't have a problem, really good april fools level content. keep up the good work!
*☼ ha! let's see Troi beat Data in THIS!*