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Go is now starting to fall to computers:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35420579

Much earlier Ben Reiniger posted: Go is now starting to fall to computers:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35420579

I've been told it was a 2 Dan strength player who recently fell to a
computer program, but without the player giving it any stones as a
handicap, and thus it's still a shocker for me. Neural net techniques now
seem to make any board game of skill vulnerable to computer dominance in a
relatively short time. Go seemed to hold every advantage for being
computer-resistant, especially given its huge 19x19 board, but now the end
seems near for human Go players. I had thought Go might not come to that
for about 100 more years. This was even taking into account any
development in the field of quantum computers. 

So, I am personally waving the white flag, as far as hoping that any chess
variant might in future be computer-resistant for any significant length of
time, if serious computer programmers target it for computer dominance.
Serious organizers of any kind of board game of skill competition will from
now on inevitably need to hope for effective anti-computer assisted
cheating measures, it seems. One of the reasons I became more interested in
chess variants was the hope that I had that this scenario could somehow be avoided at
least for a considerable while, with some chess variant periodically
invented that would become reasonably popular at some point. If I am to
remain interested in chess variants (i.e. inventing, appreciating or playing them), I'll
need to concentrate now more on enjoying them for their own sake, though
afaik a number of modern organized cash prize events are starting to happen
more regularly, say in Canada, in the case of bughouse at least.

Off topic, but perhaps related to the previous post (which is a hopeful
post, to me), on a Canadian chess message board some years ago a Canadian
inventor of games currently residing in the US argued that at least one
over-the-board competitive event (ideally with cash prizes) might be held at some point, which would involve the playing of more than one type of
chess variant, perhaps including chess itself. That is, much like there are
competitions held that involve the playing of more than a single Poker
variant within one particular face-to-face Poker competition.

The game inventor's idea is to some extent already being carried out
online, e.g. in the case of Game Courier on this website, but note that in
that case the contestants agree to the chess variants that they will play,
if an invitation from a fellow player is issued. That's as opposed to what
I thought the game inventor had in mind, i.e. a relatively small set of
chess variants, as selected (in advance of such an event!?) by an over-the-board event organizer, to be chosen from by the players (or else all the chess variants in the selection would have to be played by all the players). 

What I thought he had in mind didn't seem like such a good idea to me since
chess itself normally takes a lot more study to master than, say, the basic
form of Poker (or any of its variants), and I assumed that learning any
chess variant worth playing might also take a lot of study, so that a chess
variant player could not hope to be truly skillful in more than a handful of chess variants at best. However, I have now combed through
chessvariants.com for some time, in looking at variants that are on various lists given (aside from my not looking directly at much of the main alphabetical list), or in looking at popular variants as found on Game Courier. That was in the process of selecting variants with existing presets that I think I might like to play on Game Courier. I am now wondering how fundamentally different from standard chess that a lot of the most viable chess variants really are.

On the other hand, for the 17 variants (so far) that I think I might wish to play, if I start playing on Game Courier again at some point (after some looming dental work), I was happy to see that they each fit into at least 1 of 11 categories in total (some of which were designated by me, such as "10x10 board variants"). That represents considerable variety, for my currently preferred 17, plus 11 are games that I've not played against people more than once or twice online or offline, if ever (one being my own Sac Chess variant).

I honestly think all this "human vs computer" thing is nonsense as it's comparing totally different things.

In one side you have a group of computer scientists and mathematicians that model the game in a way it can be understood and played by a machine, it is all about making a mathematical model and reducing the solution space to the most powerful moves; in the other side you have a person that learnt playing normally doing games and studying. A Chess player can study how Deep Blue was implemented, but this won't make him playing much better. At the end of the day it's comparing apple and orange.

Anyway. What makes a game hard for computers? Usually it is:

• Search space (how many meaningful moves you can do?)
• Long term effect (the move I do now for all long it affects the game?)
• Hidden information and it's counterpart: what information I can get deduce from the game state?
• Number of rules (exceptions and special case makes computer programming much more difficult)

For example Go was unbeaten by computer for so long for the first two reasons, Magic The Gathering (a subset of it actually) is still unbeaten for the last two.

So I guess if you really want to develop a game just to make life to computer scientists and mathematicians difficult you have to point to increase all the point points as much as possible. However, it's very difficult to obtain a game that is FUN. Because if you overdo to most humans the game will appear random.

Personally I would point to a mix between Gess (but with a larger board) and Netrunner card game...

As I alluded to much earlier in this thread, the problem with computers
being good (let alone dominant) at chess (or its variants) is at least
twofold in my eyes, and that would be irrespective of whether comparing
human and computer play is like comparing apples and oranges:

1) Computers being dominant at chess, for example, hurts the estimation of
chess and chess players in the eyes of the public, which can only be
educated so much (if they buy it) that it is a case of 'apples and
oranges';

2) Far more importantly, perhaps, is that cheating in chess (for instance)
by means of computer assistance can become rife, if not yet in over-the
board events, then it certainly already has in the play of internet chess,
for example. I don't think I need list the ways this can be seriously
harmful to the game, such as for its esteem by the public. That's even if
tournament directors can do a relatively good job of catching cheaters. The
danger of even purely partner-assisted cheating in the card game of Bridge
may be one of the reasons why there is little in the way of cash prizes
offered in that game's competitions, except in high level play, such as
world championship play, where even just recently there was another case of
cheating, I seem to recall.


Perhaps playing a variant that uses Betza's "Many rules in one game", as linked to much earlier by George, would be the way that's best suited to get around the problem of neural net programming techniques (apparently about to slay the human dominance of Go) or the coming age of quantum computing power on top of that. However, I'm not at all sure of how often games are played that use "Many Rules", or how popular such games could possibly become. So far I haven't noticed any examples as played on Game Courier, for instance, so I'm wondering a little how easy it is to make a Game Courier preset for such, or even enjoy playing such.

Regarding computer-resistant variants, Marseillais Chess is probably a good
candidate.  Since each player's move actually consists of two moves, the
branching factor is extremely high.  If a typical position has 30 possible
moves in Chess, then in Marseillais a player has about 900 options.  This
is much higher than in go so computers won't be able to see very deeply. 
Actually, it's somewhat less than 900 because some of them are effective
duplicates.  (a1-a2, b1-b2 is no different than b1-b2, a1-a2).  Also
evaluating a position is problematic because there are no quiet positions. 
The usual computer chess answer to this, quiescent search, is out the
window.  On the other hand, humans probably can't see very deeply in this
game either...

If that doesn't work, here's an alternative idea.  Computer-Resistant
Chess, copyright (c) 2016 by Greg Strong.  All the standard rules of Chess
apply, with the addition of the "Swizzelstick" rule: A player must make
each move with one hand, while touching the tip of his nose with the other,
and calling out "Swizzelstick!"  Any player who fails to do this
automatically forfeits.  Oh, and when you checkmate your opponent, it's not
official until you pee on his king.

Hi George

The game of (19x19) Go is more intuitive than chess, which concentrates more on calculation, and is played on a much smaller (8x8) board. Go had been thought to be possibly more computer-resistant than chess until the latest defeat for the human side. A forlorn hope may be that neural net
programming techniques don't work as well for games (e.g. most chess variants!?) which are based more on calculation, though for the sake of accepting the challenge, and in a case of overkill, programmers are now aiming to beat top human chess players with self-teaching (neural net) techniques as well.

The 8x8 game of Arimaa (barely a chess variant IMHO) suffered a similar
fate as Go last year, as far as humanity is concerned, for that is when a
program (not using neural net technichiques afaik) finally beat top Arimaa players in the annual computer vs. top humans contest. Arimaa was thought to be promising for humanity for a different reason, in that there is a high branching factor at each ply (17000+ legal moves on average available), which might put a dampening effect on Greg's suggestion earlier in this thread concerning Marseilles (i.e. 2 move) Chess, since, as he noted, it has a branching factor of about 900 legal moves per ply.

Unless there can be a chess variant that is surprising computer-resistant,
and with the potential to be popular enough to be widely played, my flights
of fancy are turning more and more to the outside chance that in our
lifetimes there may be a global divine intervention that in effect pushes a
reset button (hopefully gently), e.g. on some of the worst aspects and/or
misuses of modern technology (including any forms of cheating).

[edit: much earlier in this thread you wrote:

"Kevin Pacey began recent topic here December 2015 with the term "next chess." And weeks later adds interesting questioning whether any CV diverges much from OrthoChess, probably meaning from programming standpoint. "Next Chess" originates with Joe Joyce wording and then by series of threads in abeyance since 2014 we made a list of over twenty contenders: NextChess9."

While hoping this thread won't wander too far off topic, I'll note that:

1) I happened to notice the term "next chess" used on a random message board some years ago (I think), where a poster whose name escapes me was noting that he thought many people were trying to invent a board game of skill that would replace chess in terms of dominant use worldwide, with some such people taking their game to trade shows, getting into quarrels involving threats of lawsuits...;

2) It has seemed to me that many of the more viable/popular chess variants that I've seen (thus far, in my early exploration of chess variants) may not differ from standard chess all that much, in that they might allow a skilled chess player to soon be equally skilled in playing them too. However trying to define what makes any one chess variant more like chess than another chess variant is would seem hardly possible. Yet, sometimes the case can be clear, at least to me. Circular chess, or Capablance Chess, for example, seem a lot more chesslike than Rococo, and a chess master may well need longer to master the latter than either of the former variants. Also, some variants use rules governing at least some of the pieces which are radically different than is the case for chess or other chess variants, e.g. Fusion Chess, or variants that use an Anti-King. Again, a chess master might often get the hang of how to play with an Archbishop or Chancellor (in Capablanca Chess) sooner, I would guess. I haven't yet touched variants which have slightly bizarre objectives, such as Losing Chess, for example.]

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/541276/deep-learning-machine-teaches-itself-chess-in-72-hours-plays-at-international-master/

On a Canadian chess message board (chesstalk) a poster (Mario
Moran-Venegas) wrote today, re: AlphaGo's loss in game 4 of the match: 

"AlphaGo's Policy neural network does not care about the quantity of point
lost or won by. It's highest priority is maximizing winning probability or
(when losing) minimizing losing probability. After move 78, it should have
followed what you say chess engines do: attempt to prolong the game by
complicating it.
The Policy neural network is the boss of hundreds (literature says a max of
1200, I don't know how many were actually used) of brute force engines
similar to chess engines.In the future versions I see the following
changes:
1.A change in the dynamic depth-of-analysis assigned to an engine. My guess
is that which ever engine was given the task of tackling the area around
move 78 was not going deep enough thus affecting the overall assessment of
the entire board as a loss for Black (AlphaGo). Many (including commentator
Michael Redmond) are now saying move 78 "did not work".
2.A change on the Policy NN to make use of complexity on the board."

If Mario's guess above, concerning move 78 of game 4, is correct, an
implication might be that the large 19x19 board used for Go may be close to
the upper limit of what the neural net technique (plus brute force engines)
used is currently capable of allowing a computer to beat top humans at, for
the game of Go, as played on an nxn size board. Make n significantly larger
than 19, that is, and a computer might fail to beat the top human players.
Not sure if the same would apply for a very large board size chess variant
too, as more calculation than intuition would be used than for Go, but
maybe there's something to the idea.

Much earlier in this thread Joe Joyce mentioned a very large board war game
of his invention that was arguably a chess variant, too. Fwiw, I've
invented a couple of 5x5x25 4D chess variants (625 cells) which would have
more cells than standard 19x19 Go, though I recall Joe's war game was even
larger. In any case, a very large board size might appeal to more potential
players of a given chess variant than other ideas that have been mentioned
in this thread, such as changing the rules a game is played by every other
turn (or the same for how a given piece moves).

George wrote earlier:

"...If little Los Alamos 6x6 had been the old standard, it would be
replaced by something bigger. And the mere fact OrthoChess is on little
8x8, and the other world CV types are 9x10 and 9x9, China and Japan, should
be embarrassing to their GMs. That's why Stanley Random started 15 years
ago calling f.i.d.e. "Simpleminded Chess" and now I do..."

Historically chess variants strongly resembling today's standard version of
chess have been tried on larger boards, but there may have been legitimate
reasons why the lesser 8x8 size was settled upon for so long. Perhaps the
expected length of an average game on any bigger board size was thought
undesirable (the same could go for a smaller sized board). What chess lacks
in comparison to Shogi or Chinese Chess it may, at the least, make up for
in other ways. 

The unique combination of chess' features, none of which may make it
particularly unique when taken seperately, have made chess enduringly
popular thus far, and no one knows exactly why. The game has held up well,
though nowadays extensive databases, engines, the difficulty for top
players to win with many Black openings, tablebases, and the increased
possibilities for cheating (especially on the internet) are putting chess
under pressure. The question may be whether any chess variant can hope to
replace it anytime soon, in terms of dominance, and so far I haven't
noticed any obvious candidates for such, perhaps even in terms of merit
IMHO.

[edit: For some years Arimaa seemed a golden candidate to be the Next Chess. I used to Google it and see comments like "they've fixed chess". Before a computer finally beat top players in 2015, though, one of Arimaa's supposed strengths over chess, that there was no set opening setup, had already been weakened since there were certain setups thought better than others. There is a similar problem with Fischer Random, I've heard, in that any number of starting setups are apparently not very interesting. In any case, I actually prefer a chess variant that has a fixed start position, for merchandising and study purposes, assuming the opening phase is at least as rich in possibilities as standard chess. Also, I think a variant that looks nice on someone's coffeetable could further help to popularize it, and a fixed start position assists with this. Unfortunately this doesn't bode well for variants with many more cells than a game of Scrabble (15x15), which might be otherwise desirable for possible computer-resistance. Arimaa also had a problem hurting its speed of spread, in that its inventor imposed various licensing requirements, such as on websites, clubs or literature, although many apps for the game may have been sold, at least. Meanwhile, below is a link about Arimaa, which notes the history of its man vs. machine challenges.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arimaa

I've edited my previous post a bit, to include discussion of Arimaa and
some features I think desirable if there is ever to be a Next Chess (in
terms of dominance like chess currently has). I may elaborate further on
the latter in another thread in future, perhaps beginning with why I
personally chose or rejected certain chess variants as ones I might play if
I take up playing on Game Courier again (such as after fully recovering
from recent dental work). Perhaps ones I rejected are more interesting
cases to mention, since some I accepted were at least partly for the sake
of anticipated fun/novelty (e.g. Smess, Circular Chess).

Fwiw, below is a wikipedia link re: technological (AI) singularity, i.e.
the notion that someday, perhaps inevitably, and soon, AI will exceed human
intelligence. This notion is one more reason why I am now pessimistic about
any chess variant being computer-resistant for very long (e.g. for
decades), if it gets popular enough to receive serious attention from board
game engine programmers. On the faint hope side, perhaps, I seem to recall
something ancient being written about evil inventions to come, in the
latter days, before the better times that would follow, so who really knows
what the future holds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

P.S.: I got this link while looking at wikipedia's Driverless Cars entry -
such vehicles are perhaps a sign of the rapid rate of progress for AI these
days. I had been trying to put the difficulty of making a strong playing
engine for large board chess variants into perspective somehow.

Intelligent Adversary Searches
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b536/49ac430195dccbcff62a34e0c800a4782c97.pdf

I recall Fergus mentioned to me that Knightmare Chess might be computer resistant. I now doubt that it ultimately will prove to be, even though there is a quite random element involved in the game (which doesn't appeal to me to begin with, though strictly speaking as a standard chess player). Computers are now great at other games with random elements present, Bridge for instance, and so I expect programmers can succeed with Knightmare Chess too, given time to absorb how skilled humans play it. Not only that, there is still the spectre of things like neural net techniques, or the development of quantum computers.

It struck me today that one thing that might allow a computer resistant chess variant to be produced is to introduce a quasi-random element instead, one that often gives humans the edge. If the idea is workable, chess engine assisted cheating or the superiority of engines over even top humans may largely go away as concerns in the minds of possibly many. Computers as yet cannot be programmed to do advanced moral thinking, as far as I know, and I suspect they might never be able to even if nominally Technological (AI) Singularity is achieved. Morality takes into account even emotional feelings, and there seems little doubt that computers can never be given a soul of the sort many think we may have.

How might such a chess variant based on humanity's grasp of morality work? Well, the best we have for an expert in morality could be a law school or seminary teacher, for example. For the sort of chess variant I have in mind, it would be a kind of combination of the knowlege of moral issues and chess that a player has, as well as his chess skills (kind of like chess boxing combines chess and boxing - another variant that may be computer resistant to some extent). Before making a move in such a chess variant, the moral expert (teacher) or an assistant arbiter asks the player a skill testing question (could be multiple choice). If his answer is acceptable, he gets to move, otherwise he loses his turn, much as in some dice chess variants. Like chess boxing, this is perhaps not the sort of chess variant you can play on your coffeetable at home with a guest, but you could play it in a tournament hall or on the internet (securely guarded large trivial pursuit-style card decks, or databases, of moral Q & A's might be used). Young children may be at a disadvantage at times, but at least some adults might not mind that at all. [edit: Now that I think of it, a sort of trivial pursuit style card could also be a small database device that also lights up red (wrong) or green (right) for 1 of 2 answer choices offered and selected from; that would make this variant idea more workable at a tournament hall I'd suppose.] [edit: An example moral question might be: "A man drops a $5 bill and walks away. Do you: 1) offer him the bill, or 2) take it, because you found it"? A less simple one might be "You're a healthy boy and there are three similar cookies. Your younger sister is blind and cannot speak. Do you: 1) split 1 in half, take 1 and 1/2 & offer the rest to your sister, or 2) take 1 and offer 2 to your sister"?]

I've edited my previous message a bit, in case anyone missed it.

Speaking as an expert in morality, a Philosophy Ph.D. with an emphasis on ethics, I daresay that a game like this would trivialize morality. Morality is about real-life situations, and the arbiter of morality is reality, not a so-called expert who gets to decide whether you will move in a game. Before people could play such a game, they would have to agree on who to accept as experts. Although moral truth is not a subjective matter, it is not a subject met with univeral agreement, and it is one on which people sometimes strongly and sometimes violently disagree. Besides being computer-resistant, this game would be human-resistant.

Knightmare Chess involves intuition and ingenuity. It is not mere randomness like throwing dice to determine which pieces to move. It is the closest a Chess variant gets to Calvinball without losing structure.

Hi Fergus

Someone pointed out to me on a Canadian chess message board that computers are already being programmed to debate moral issues. I suppose this alone puts my variant idea to waste:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ibm-supercomputer-watson-programmed-debate-moral-issues-1447413

Basically, Watson can locate relevant texts on moral issues and summarize their main points, but it can't draw any conclusions. That's not moral reasoning. That's text processing.

Hi Fergus

Might you have an idea of how difficult it could be for an experienced Game Courier programmer to write a preset (rule enforcing or not) for Knightmare Chess? I'm not sure I could find any number of opponents to play against over-the-board in Ottawa, but the game makes me curious. I'm getting ready to move with my family to another place in town in the coming months, but after that I may resume Game Courier play at some point.