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ZiegeDame posted:Can anyone else make sense of this? Are we witnessing the birth of a new Herp or is there some reason they could believe that White's best move is to throw away a pawn on their second turn? (Serious question, I am far from a chess expert.) There are many openings in which one side "throws away" an early pawn - actually capturing the pawn takes a move, and usually doesn't develop any pieces. So the side offering a pawn gets a lead in development, with the hopes of transforming that lead into more than a single pawn further down the line. Whether that particular offering would be a good choice for white, who knows.
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Sep 14, 2017 05:48
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I don't want to keep nagging but could one of the mentors please remind the white thread to use long notation? It does actually make discussions easier to follow.
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Sep 14, 2017 06:19
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ZiegeDame posted:Can anyone else make sense of this? Are we witnessing the birth of a new Herp or is there some reason they could believe that White's best move is to throw away a pawn on their second turn? (Serious question, I am far from a chess expert.) d4 is a known line, the smith-morra. b4 is just crazy talk.
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Sep 14, 2017 06:35
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ZiegeDame posted:Can anyone else make sense of this? Are we witnessing the birth of a new Herp or is there some reason they could believe that White's best move is to throw away a pawn on their second turn? (Serious question, I am far from a chess expert.) Serious answer, they're farther from a chess expert, as might be intuited from the title "Newbie game".
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Sep 14, 2017 11:35
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ZiegeDame posted:Can anyone else make sense of this? Are we witnessing the birth of a new Herp or is there some reason they could believe that White's best move is to throw away a pawn on their second turn? (Serious question, I am far from a chess expert.) This doesn't strike me as Herping, the D4 move as mentioned is by the book and he's noted its superiority to the B4 move. No veering off into hyperbole or gimmickry either.
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Sep 14, 2017 11:48
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May I just add that I find the constant dumping on Herp to be mean-spirited, unproductive, and distracting from the enjoyment of the game? I don't expect to change anyone's behavior, but I appeal to the thread's collective respect and ask that we all stop it.
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Sep 14, 2017 12:11
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Nidoking posted:May I just add that I find the constant dumping on Herp to be mean-spirited, unproductive, and distracting from the enjoyment of the game? In this context I find it to be good natured and amusing, it's totally fine, but thanks for worrying about it. E: Banter is ok. Attacks aren't. HerpicleOmnicron5 fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Sep 14, 2017 |
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Sep 14, 2017 12:28
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Nidoking posted:May I just add that I find the constant dumping on Herp to be mean-spirited, unproductive, and distracting from the enjoyment of the game? I think, in the spirit of fairness: If I don't get to do it, then neither does anyone else. Dr. Fetus posted:Yeah, I'm glad to see that things are starting off on much better and even footing this time. In many ways, the first game was more of a newbie game than even this one, because if I'd have thought about it for a hot second it's obvious that any departure from book openings at the start is just about the dumbest thing to do. Which makes me indirectly an accomplice in losing the game for black from the start and also a chess dumb. I hope the teams are well aware of this too, and won't stray from book openings until they have to. I'd hate to see black gimp themselves like we did.
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Sep 14, 2017 12:46
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:In this context I find it to be good natured and amusing, it's totally fine, but thanks for worrying about it. Agreed, keep it in good fun friends  Also I'm glad you're taking it well because I find it hilarious that doing a herp has become such an established chess concept that people are actually discussing whether or not moves live up to the criteria for being considered herping 
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Sep 14, 2017 14:10
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That No Retreat lp was a goddamned classic.
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Sep 14, 2017 14:43
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 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3
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Sep 14, 2017 20:04
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Two most popular moves here are apparently d6 and Nc6. Nc6 I understand, it plays directly to the plan black has (contest queenside in general and d4 in particular). But why d6? Obviously black wants to play Bg4 at some point after d6 (which I assume is the entire point). Other than that, it just seems like a waste of time. It also looks like it commits black to certain things like kingside fianchetto. Someone who knows what's up, please let me in on the secret.
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Sep 15, 2017 00:53
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The point of d6 is to control e5, so Black can play Nf6.
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Sep 15, 2017 01:32
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It also doesn't require that black fianchetto on the kingside. ...e6, and sometimes ...e5 eventually followed by ...Be7 are fairly common.
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Sep 15, 2017 03:00
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White are going to be shocked when black follow mainline theory instead of playing Nf6. I think White doesn't see the simple 3. e5 to chase the knight away, which is why they think Nf6 is a good move.
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Sep 15, 2017 14:21
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 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6
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Sep 15, 2017 21:39
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Looking like team white wants to play the Moscow variation to avoid theory. I'm also torn between White going "hey I have this *strategic idea*" which is a good purposeful way to play chess (assuming the idea is ok) and white going "if the game goes *long variation* this is good!" Because as we know, long variation wrong variation. edit: selfishly I really wanted this game to follow a great well known line so we could put the team's decisions up against the great players and see how they differed but I guess that's not to be. algebra testes fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Sep 16, 2017 |
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Sep 16, 2017 03:23
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I think it's perfectly reasonable to get out of theory as soon as doing so doesn't leave you at a disadvantage. This is a newbie game, calculation errors and strange things are bound to happen at some point. Why not try to beat them in the middle game, or use the time available to look up various endgames and see if you can aim for one of them? Also at this point I want to make a prediction. The game is going to continue Bb5 Nc6 Nc3 (after much deliberation and confusion when black didn't play Bd7) and finally a6. Then the board is set up for all sorts of fun things on the queenside.
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Sep 16, 2017 05:07
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algebra testes posted:edit: selfishly I really wanted this game to follow a great well known line so we could put the team's decisions up against the great players and see how they differed but I guess that's not to be. Yeah, it's too bad no great players have played the Moscow.
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Sep 16, 2017 05:09
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Banned King Urgoon posted:Yeah, it's too bad no great players have played the Moscow. Disappointed this wasn't the Kasparov v the World game, tbqh.
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Sep 16, 2017 05:34
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When it comes to evaluating sequences of moves, I find it helpful to keep in mind how actual chess AIs function. I won't discuss it exhaustively, and it may be a bit much for new players, but it's a good aid to understanding how to consider more than one move ahead. I think we can all agree that looking several moves ahead is a great skill to have, but the idea that there are different ways to do that may come as a surprise to some. Computers obviously can't evaluate things qualitatively - in other words, they can't look at a board and say "That appears to be a good position in general." Everything has to be based on numbers. So a chess AI will have what's known as a "heuristic function". This is a method that takes the state of the board (including such information as when the last pawn moved and whose turn is next) and turns that into a number based on how strong the AI player's position is. Checkmate positions tend to be artificial values, like -500 and 100,000 on a scale from 0-1000, because that's either the best or worst state to be in. Everything else will depend on elements like which pieces each side has, which squares are defended by each side, which pieces are being threatened, etc. The heuristic function is basically the personality of the AI, and there's no perfect answer. I won't go into the details of how to construct a heuristic, because for this discussion, it's enough to know that there is a value assigned to every possible board state. When you do your own looking ahead as a human, the qualitative notions of "good" and "bad" are sufficient. Once the computer can evaluate any single board position, it's time to decide on a move. The AI that most amateurs would write the moment they have a good heuristic function is something like: "List all the possible moves I have. Calculate the heuristic value for the state of the board after each move. Choose the move with the value most favorable to me." It's not an awful AI, but it's only considering the immediate results of its move. A better AI would look at its opponent's possible responses: "List all the possible moves I have. For each move, list all the possible moves the opponent has. Calculate the heuristic value after each possible move by the opponent, and choose the move with the value least favorable to me. Assign that value as the heuristic value of my move. Choose the move that now has the highest value." In other words, it looks at the worst possible move (from its own perspective) that the opponent can make, and uses that to evaluate its own move. After all, there's no value in making a great heuristic move if the opponent's next move puts it in checkmate. (One could argue that that's a sign of a poor heuristic, but it's not the job of the heuristic function to look ahead.) The AI can take this further still: When evaluating an opponent's move, it can look at each move it could make from that position and choose the best one. Then it can choose the best of its own moves by looking at all of the opponent's possible moves and choosing the worst of those. For each move in sequence, it considers the best move it can make based on what the worst move its opponent could make would be, then comparing the results as it walks backward through the decision tree until it has assigned a value to each move based on all of the possible states of the board four, eight, or even more moves in advance. Obviously, given the number of possible moves with a large number of pieces, that's a LOT of calculation - which is why the difficulty settings in most games affect the time it takes for the computer to make a move. It's pretty simple to tell it how many moves to think ahead, and the more moves, the longer it takes to evaluate them all. There are tricks and shortcuts to cut down on processing time, but the end result is the same. This is the basic "min-max algorithm", because it alternates between choosing the best of its own moves, as decided by the worst possible response, and so on. This is why, the moment you start looking at longer lines and being pleased with the result, it's time to step back and ask "Is my opponent likely to make that move? What other moves are available, and how might I respond to those?" The Black team in the first game got into a lot of "As long as they don't make this move, we're in a good position" or "We have to hope they don't see this" or "This will work if the White team responds this way", and that optimism is poor chess. Pessimism is key to looking ahead, because despite what you may hope, your opponent is also trying to win.
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Sep 16, 2017 10:09
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Out of curiosity, what does the time since the last pawn moved has to do with anything?
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Sep 16, 2017 10:17
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Fat Samurai posted:Out of curiosity, what does the time since the last pawn moved has to do with anything? Most immediately, it's used to determine whether en passant capture is possible. However, it also affects stalemate conditions, since fifty moves without either a capture or a pawn move is a stalemate with exceptions for certain forced mate situations. I just wanted to give an example of the kind of information that isn't obvious from the board alone but is necessary to evaluate it. A stalemate could turn out to be the most desirable outcome if every other sequence of moves leads to being checkmated, while it could be a disaster if the AI has a significant advantage.
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Sep 16, 2017 10:28
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Nidoking posted:fifty moves without either a capture or a pawn move is a stalemate
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Sep 16, 2017 20:16
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LogicalFallacy posted:Wait what? That's actually a somewhat interesting thing I did not know. To be fair, I haven't really done much of anything with chess since I was in elementary school, casual games with my grandpa excepted, so I've never really encountered or looked at some of the more eclectic rules. The timer measures irreversible moves; captures obviously are, but since pawns can't go backwards so are pawn moves. For non-standard moves, castling isn't irreversible since you can move king and rook back to their starting positions, promotion is a pawn move, en passant is both a pawn move and a capture.
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Sep 16, 2017 20:33
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LogicalFallacy posted:Wait what? That's actually a somewhat interesting thing I did not know. To be fair, I haven't really done much of anything with chess since I was in elementary school, casual games with my grandpa excepted, so I've never really encountered or looked at some of the more eclectic rules. I believe the reason for this is that a pawn move is a permanent, irreversible change of the board, just like a capture, so from there new options might open up. One thing I like is when people mess with the rules in unintended ways. There's an example on Wikipedia by someone called Tim Krabbé.  White's turn. 1. e7-e8=R, Kf3-g2 (the e pawn is promoted to rook)  2. 0-0-0-0# (What) At the time, the rules of chess said that castling is legal when both the king and the rook in question have not yet moved. Well, the e8 rook clearly hasn't moved, as it was just created. So, white castled vertically, moving their king to e3 and their rook to e2, checkmate. Since then the official rules have been amended to say that the castling rook must occupy the same rank (that is, numbered row) as the king. Another one is this chess puzzle:  White mates in one move. The only way to do this is if white moves their pawn... then promotes it to a BLACK knight.
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Sep 16, 2017 20:50
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In that second puzzle couldn't black move Kb8 and be fine? Or heck, Nxc7 since it's a black knight?
Added Space fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Sep 16, 2017 |
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Sep 16, 2017 21:15
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Added Space posted:In that second puzzle couldn't black move Kb8 and be fine? Or heck, Nxc7 since it's a black knight? Nope, there would be a black knight there and you cannot take your own pieces. And knight from b8 to c7 is not a legal move.
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Sep 16, 2017 21:18
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Carbon dioxide posted:Nope, there would be a black knight there and you cannot take your own pieces. derp, naturally I assume it would capture the rook.
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Sep 16, 2017 21:19
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Stop editing your posts while I'm replying, this gets confusing.
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Sep 16, 2017 21:20
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Added Space posted:In that second puzzle couldn't black move Kb8 and be fine? Or heck, Nxc7 since it's a black knight? Point is, when you promote to a black piece king can't capture it anymore. And knights can't capture a piece right next to them either.
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Sep 16, 2017 21:24
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Is this going by the Air Bud rules aka there is no rule saying you can't promote a piece to the opposite side?
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Sep 16, 2017 21:56
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Hunt11 posted:Is this going by the Air Bud rules aka there is no rule saying you can't promote a piece to the opposite side? I move my rook horizontally... onto another board. Man, my HS chess club was full of cocky nitpickers. I'm surprised we never actually tried that in a tournament.
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Sep 16, 2017 23:00
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Here's a return to normalcy in the form of another chess puzzle (from George Koltanowski and Milton Finkelstein's book, "Checkmate!"). This one's not too tough. White to play and mate.
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Sep 16, 2017 23:55
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This is an easy one. Qh5
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Sep 17, 2017 00:16
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Hunt11 posted:This is an easy one. Qh5 Find the full line 1.Qh5+ Rh6, now what?
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Sep 17, 2017 00:18
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Leylite posted:Here's a return to normalcy in the form of another chess puzzle (from George Koltanowski and Milton Finkelstein's book, "Checkmate!"). This one's not too tough. Qxh5+ Rh6, Rh8+ Kxh8, Qxh6+ Kg8, Qg7#. I think.
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Sep 17, 2017 00:44
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Cloud Potato posted:Qxh5+ Rh6, Rh8+ Kxh8, Qxh6+ Kg8, Qg7#. I think. Yup, that's the solution. Forcing a piece to abandon its guard post is common, but this applies to the King too. Notice that even without the mate, this was an even exchange of a Rook for a Rook, with gain of tempo. Additionally, the further forward a pawn is, the more powerful it is! Even in non-composed situations like this one, pawns can be surprisingly helpful either as direct mate threats, or just indirect positional advantage to cramp your opponent until eventually you can create a more actualized concrete threat.
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Sep 17, 2017 01:38
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 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Bb5+ Probably the best alternative if you want to move out of the books asap with the Sicilian? It's going to be interesting to see how the teams deal when the game starts getting more aggressive. I've noticed both in the threads and in some Chess by post games with newer players that they tend towards responding to aggression with more passive defensive moves rather than by creating threats of their own. This is probably something I should cover in the threads when I have time to sit down and write more things.
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Sep 17, 2017 17:05
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So... What's the Black team's best answer to this? Nc6?
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Sep 17, 2017 17:40
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