OSDev.org

Hello, everyone. Just curious, are there any chess players here? What would you think about a local online chess tournament?

Chess is a dangerous game - it's a vampire that sucks people dry if they get in too deep. The trouble is that people cheat by memorising openings to ever greater depth, and that task consumes them, wasting all their potential to do something worthwhile with their brain.

DavidCooper wrote:Chess is a dangerous game - it's a vampire that sucks people dry if they get in too deep.

OSDeving can be even more dangerous. Any favorite game can drag you a lot. And the name here "ad infinitum".

I've tried to learn how to play chess, but it doesn't make sense to me at all. Its rules are pretty odd and arbitrary, more than any other game I've ever played, aren't they?

Isn't it the very nature of games to have arbitrary rules?

Kevin wrote:Isn't it the very nature of games to have arbitrary rules?

But not that odd rules.

muazzam wrote:

Kevin wrote:Isn't it the very nature of games to have arbitrary rules?

But not that odd rules.

Please, define "odd".

The rules aren't too hard to get up to speed with. Most pieces just follow simple rules which apply to them at all times. The only complications are with castling (which isn't hard to follow - king moves one square towards castle and castle jumps over it, but this must be their first involvement in the game, there must be no other piece between them, and you can't castle to get out of check), and handling pawns (which involves three simple rules: they can move forward two squares on their first move, a pawn which has just moved two squares forward can be taken by a pawn it lands next to just as if it had only moved one square forward instead of two, and they turn into queens when they reach the other end of the board, or a knight/bishop/castle if preferred).

What might be fun (though I don't have time to get involved) would be to write compact programs capable of playing chess to see who can write the strongest size-limited program (perhaps starting with 1024 bytes, then increasing it to 2048 once further progress becomes too hard in the smaller space, then 4096 bytes if necessary, etc.). Someone would need to write a host program capable of drawing the chessboard and pieces (if a visual display is needed - maybe it isn't, but it would be useful for reviewing the action, and it would allow people to play against one of the programs instead of only having programs play against each other), and this would also check that the moves are legal and decide who won. The two competing programs would be loaded in by the main program and would simply have to read the current board & timer and declare what their next move is whenever they're ready to play it. Each program would also be given a maximum size of workspace to ensure that neither can book more memory than the other.

A program making random moves could potentially win games, and it needn't even know the rules - the host program would simply return control straight back to it if it makes an illegal move and tell it to try again. It might be possible for 512-byte programs to play and win games of chess with sufficent strength to be able to force a win in a reasonable number of moves.

I play correspondence chess online occasionally, albeit not well. Maybe 1400, although I've never played in a tournament. I've actually found solving chess problems more fun, recently.

I am not a chess player but I have known the rules (in general) since I was five or so. It is interesting to note how well I remember the rules although I have not played the game for ages. If you learn something when you are young, it works like WORM or like a native language but even better for these kind of things?

Rules are really primitive, but there are tons of possible combinations. Like almost any other game - it's difficulty depends on your opponent. I used to play with my father when I was a kid, but I never managed to win even one game.

I play chess somewhat regularly, against my son (8). So far he can't really threaten me, but he will, in a year or two.

I never got "into it" to the point where I started memorizing anything, though. My life is plenty busy without that.

And any online chess playing will be dominated by those few who have a chess program running in the other window, and you'll always wonder if your opponent is one of those few, which really spoils it. I'll pass on that, thank you.

DavidCooper wrote:The only complications are with castling (which isn't hard to follow - king moves one square towards castle and castle jumps over it, but this must be their first involvement in the game, there must be no other piece between them, and you can't castle to get out of check)...

None of the fields the king moves through may be threatened, either.

DavidCooper wrote:...a pawn which has just moved two squares forward can be taken by a pawn it lands next to just as if it had only moved one square forward instead of two...

En passant. A rule that even Grand Masters have stumbled over, one of them recently.

I occassionally play chess. Never really played any online chess though. I'm not really good either

Solar wrote:

And any online chess playing will be dominated by those few who have a chess program running in the other window, and you'll always wonder if your opponent is one of those few, which really spoils it. I'll pass on that, thank you.

Why would someone like to cheat in online chess if there's no actual bid? Just to waste his time and to troll someone?

i play chess sometimes but have never tried it online!!