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Comment by v1tyaz | Hacker News Reader

> This gulf in skill and experience meant that the two couldn’t play together in a meaningful way; if they tried, Gage would get crushed, and the match wouldn’t be much fun. So he decided to fix the problem.

This problem has already been solved for hundreds of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_handicap

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In my opinion, there is no acceptable handicap system for chess; its symmetry isn't conducive. It is also something that is almost never done - I've never seen a handicap (beyond time and color) used in any chess club. Allotting more time to the weaker (and less to the stronger) player is probably the best method of balancing skill discrepancy. This is one of the reasons I abandoned chess for go (baduk, weichi, igo, etc.), where the handicap system is fully functional up to 9 additional stones (pieces) for the weaker player. The gameboard sizes can range from 19x19 to 5x5 (refers to the intersecting lines within grid). While this system is almost perfect in go, it is at best a blemish to the game in chess. However, loser's chess can be quite entertaining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losing_chess

I think a good handicap system for chess would be too allow [unlimited] undos to the weaker player but no undos to the stronger player.

That would allow the newb to quickly try different strategies and see their outcomes right away, enabling them to learn faster.

I imagine it's more fun to play with many more interesting pieces.

> Yet, in spite of this, after playing Really Bad Chess for the past week, I’ve found myself with a much better understanding of the game, and how the various pieces interact with each other.

Not to mention that you can potentially learn tactics much quicker with more practice using the interesting pieces.

This only proves that "solve" can be a pretty arrogant term. It's speaks of a contained finality that often doesn't exist.

Thank you for the link. I was unaware of the handicap system. Although I think this is a novel approach because you don't need to first rank the players, both players are equally disadvantaged.

In theory, I still bet that a strong player would win regardless of which pieces are on the board.

It gets rough when you're down a rook or queen...

When I was about 17 I used to give my 10 year old brother queen-odds (I played without my queen). He apparently remembers it fondly, and I had to really think.

lol, yeah, that awkward and long list of different handicaps looks great.

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