Mentioned in TFA: This version of chess is given by Martin Gardner in his "Mathematical Games" column of July 1980 (pages 27 and 31) — https://www.jstor.org/stable/24966361 — and the analysis of White's mate is given in the column of August 1980 (page 18) — https://www.jstor.org/stable/24966383.
I do wonder how things would change if the board were 9 cells long; 10 cells long; etc. Also, it seems "in the spirit" to permit castling if neither K nor R has moved yet: i.e., from the position
K _ R N r _ n k
White ought to be permitted to
_ R K N r _ n k
(Or maybe there's a stronger argument for R K _ N r _ n k, actually. The former was conceptually "rook moves halfway toward king, then king moves to the other side of rook"; but the latter is "rook moves two steps in king's direction while king moves to the other side of rook.")
I'm pretty sure this wouldn't change the analysis on the 8-cell board at all, though. I wonder if it would change the analysis on any size of board.
Maybe I'm not good enough at chess to understand the strategy here, but how would castling be useful in this 1-D game? Castling in a normal game protects your King and activates the Rook. In this 1-D game, your King starts out protected behind the Rook. If you castle and end up in a _ R K N position, your king is exposed and your Rook is trapped behind the King, useless, with no way to ever get it back out. The Rook seems essential for mate, and its power has been eliminated.
Reminds me of Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland, where he describes Lineland. A one-dimensional world whose King can only move forward and backward, cannot conceive of sideways, and considers his tiny segment of existence complete and sufficient. The Linelanders are portrayed as pitiable, intellectually imprisoned by their single dimension. Much like us in our three :)
The letter is the piece to move, and the number is the index to move to, starting from 1 on the left. The first alphanumeric pair is your move, then the computer's move. Comma. Your move, computer's move...
the notation is just an array of move tuples, each tuple contains 1 move for white and 1 move for black, where each move is written as <1st letter of piece name><destination square>
I'm not very good at chess, but I dont get why most things are considered a stalemate? I strategically remove all pieces of the enemy, leaving only the king against my rook/tower whatever its called, the king has nowhere to run. In my eyes it's a checkmate. The game just calls it a stalemate. Would be a stalemate if I couldn't do anything, but I can kill the enemy king.
Black can’t move the knight: it’s illegal to make a move that puts yourself in check. Thus black has no legal moves, but isn’t in check, so the result is a draw.
Mentioned in TFA: This version of chess is given by Martin Gardner in his "Mathematical Games" column of July 1980 (pages 27 and 31) — https://www.jstor.org/stable/24966361 — and the analysis of White's mate is given in the column of August 1980 (page 18) — https://www.jstor.org/stable/24966383.
I do wonder how things would change if the board were 9 cells long; 10 cells long; etc. Also, it seems "in the spirit" to permit castling if neither K nor R has moved yet: i.e., from the position
K _ R N r _ n k
White ought to be permitted to
_ R K N r _ n k
(Or maybe there's a stronger argument for R K _ N r _ n k, actually. The former was conceptually "rook moves halfway toward king, then king moves to the other side of rook"; but the latter is "rook moves two steps in king's direction while king moves to the other side of rook.")
I'm pretty sure this wouldn't change the analysis on the 8-cell board at all, though. I wonder if it would change the analysis on any size of board.
Maybe I'm not good enough at chess to understand the strategy here, but how would castling be useful in this 1-D game? Castling in a normal game protects your King and activates the Rook. In this 1-D game, your King starts out protected behind the Rook. If you castle and end up in a _ R K N position, your king is exposed and your Rook is trapped behind the King, useless, with no way to ever get it back out. The Rook seems essential for mate, and its power has been eliminated.
That finally confirmed that I am too regarded for chess if even 1D is too hard yay
is that str.replace(g,t) ?
This is really nice.
Incidentally, there is an actual 1D game that is one of the most popular games on the planet: Backgammon.
Good observation. Considering stacking of pieces maybe 1.5D though.
Backgammon, the game everyone's seen and at the same time nobody knows how to play :P
Reminds me of Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland, where he describes Lineland. A one-dimensional world whose King can only move forward and backward, cannot conceive of sideways, and considers his tiny segment of existence complete and sufficient. The Linelanders are portrayed as pitiable, intellectually imprisoned by their single dimension. Much like us in our three :)
It was a lot more fun than I first thought!
It took me an embarrassing number of attempts to win.
Haha, i was taking N4 and N6, but didn’t figure the steps after that.
To win we need to let knight die because rook can move multiple steps to kill the king.
From a third person perspective R2 is a deceptive move that takes advantage algorithm to make the black king back off to kill its knight.
you could also just move your king on that move same result knight cant move, only king can, so it has to back away
I was only able to beat this after a couple retries. The hint was hard to read.
Silly nice brain teaser
love it!
Oh very interesting. Even with these restrictions, there are quite a few variations, and it seems only one ends up with white winning.
Finally, a version of Chess I can understand. Thank you.
It's very interesting and fun!)
i could not beat it, and i can't read that chess notation
The letter is the piece to move, and the number is the index to move to, starting from 1 on the left. The first alphanumeric pair is your move, then the computer's move. Comma. Your move, computer's move...
The first move after the comma is yours (open with kNight to 4), and the second move is apparently predetermined or always chosen.
the notation is just an array of move tuples, each tuple contains 1 move for white and 1 move for black, where each move is written as <1st letter of piece name><destination square>
Cool idea. This is smart and lean. I like it
Nice! :)
Fun stuff, love it!
The first move is always: white rook takes black rook, then the only remaining move for black is to move the knight away, which results in checkmate.
If you play the game, you realise this ends up in stalemate.
I'm not very good at chess, but I dont get why most things are considered a stalemate? I strategically remove all pieces of the enemy, leaving only the king against my rook/tower whatever its called, the king has nowhere to run. In my eyes it's a checkmate. The game just calls it a stalemate. Would be a stalemate if I couldn't do anything, but I can kill the enemy king.
It's a stalemate because while the king can't move, he isn't under active attack. There is nowhere he can legally move, but he's safe where he's at.
There is an explanation further down. A stalemate is if the enemy has no valid loves and is not in check
Black can’t move the knight: it’s illegal to make a move that puts yourself in check. Thus black has no legal moves, but isn’t in check, so the result is a draw.