Duck Chess | Hacker News Reader

Duck Chess

duckchess.com

441 pointscolinprince79 comments

Love this!

Unrelated, but reminds me of another story featuring Chess and a Duck, and also relevant to the HN audience, which relates to the old videogame Battle Chess: https://bwiggs.com/notebook/queens-duck/

I loved battle chess!! The animations were so cool at the time.

Me too! Battle Chess is what got me into chess back in the 80s.

Apparently there's a new-ish version on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/200150/Battle_Chess_Game_...

BEWARE: I was tempted to do an impulse buy. Luckily I read the reviews first - they are not favourable. Seems abandoned and buggy.

I share that story quite often, as an example of practical thinking to manage a manager.

Maybe, originally, chess did have the duck, but when presented to the emperor, he wanted to have it removed. So duck chess is actually now reverting to the pure, original form!

Also for nostalgia - Archon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon:_The_Light_and_the_Da...

> “Chess is a matter of delicate judgement, knowing when to punch and how to duck”

Indeed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing

The one thing I don't understand is whether or not each chess round is a new game, or if the chess round is paused to start the boxing round. I'm just at the minimum requirement for chess, and not that many of my games end in a draw.

The chess game is paused each boxing round. The chess board is carefully lifted out of the boxing ring and brought back after the punching!

What do they say when a player is defeated, check out?

1 move each, then 1 boxing round. Boxing matches used to go on for an obscene number of rounds...

The chess round is 3 minutes. Like a normal chess match, each player has a clock and total time limit.

3m chess round, 3m boxing round, 3m chess round, 3m boxing round, etc

Someone needs to combine this variant with four player chess.

It's such a funny sport. It's like serious slavs vs germans mostly and then you look in the audience and there's RZA rubbing his chin

who is RZA?

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

Member of the Wu Tang Clan, the band behind Da Mystery of Chessboxin Super parent's link is about a sport called chess boxing

Weird. I highlight RZA, tap "web search" and he's the first result. Less work than taking the time to tap out "who is RZA?"

But then all the other readers benefit.

This is true. It's also more social.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKF3qcJh45Y this guy, the wu-tang clan's chief producer

I mean:

> The concept of chessboxing was first coined in the 1979 kung fu film Mystery of Chessboxing made by Joseph Kuo. In homage to the film, the Wu-Tang Clan brought chessboxing into popular consciousness for the first time in 1993, when they released the song "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'".

Though apparently the song itself is just entirely regular rap bragging, with nothing at all about chess, boxing, or the movie.

This seems like a pretty simple addition but that probably has profound effects on end-games. Also the fact that it's a duck is pretty adorable.

Not to mention the preprogrammed (memorized) series of follow up moves to the move you just made. This basically throws unpredictability in an otherwise predictable set of moves. If I’m thinking of taking your queen, and that action requires me to setup no more than 4 moves to do it, how can I be sure a giant f$&@ duck doesn’t ruin my plans? Brilliant way to keep the game fresh and “in the moment”

Tomorrow: AlphaZero has trained itself to play Duck Chess and has decisively beaten all the world's Duck Chess grandmasters.

Would be interesting just to add the duck rule to the existing trained model and see how long it takes to adjust.

Game 1000: AlphaZero learns to use the duck against AlphaZero

Game 2000: AlphaZero learns to defend against AlphaZero's duck use

Game 3000: AlphaZero learns ways around AlphaZero's defenses against AlphaZero's duck use

Seems like fun, and surprisingly not listed in the list of chess variants.

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

Maybe the duck is putting off the purists.

Yeah, if they lose the duck the game might work ;)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9137736

I thought I had remembered this post as well from way back then, but wasn’t sure it was a duck as well.

It's good that they didn't listen to the guy, he's obviously a quack.

The creator of this game must clearly have been inspired by another of the 20th century’s great contributions to the dynamic puzzle canon: 1983’s Chuckie Egg:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/E4loQjf7v-M/maxresdefault.jpg

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuckie_Egg

”Eight levels are played initially under the watch of a giant caged duck. [The player is then] pursued by the freed duck flying around the screen and homing in on him.”

You could reduce the first-player advantage a tiny bit by allowing Black to place the duck at the start of the game, instead of starting it off the board. Presumably Black would place it on d3 or e3.

(Some people think reducing the first-player advantage would be valuable. I'd rather increase it, like in tennis).

You can always play Nf3 :)

Reminds me of a chess mod a friend taught me: acid chess. Pieces capture like normal but move however you want. So on your turn you can pick up any one of your pieces and put it on any empty square. Or make a normal capture. It turns out to be a surprisingly interesting game.

Does that include the king? Seems it would be pretty impossible to checkmate a king that can jump anywhere. Maybe only if it's not in check? Or is there some other win condition than checkmate?

Oh sorry, I did forget two important caveats: the king moves normally and you can only move normally onto the back rank.

hah, what a fun variant. Some of the most fun I've ever had playing chess has been "bughouse" (aka tandem chess). It's basically 2v2 chess with the trick being, you and your partner play opposite colors. Whenever you capture a piece, you hand it to your partner, and they can drop it anywhere they like on their board.

You can play this on lichess.org with the crazyhouse variant set.

Indeed, you can watch a live game right now, no account needed: https://lichess.org/tv/crazyhouse

Only 1v1 on there at the moment; Bughouse (2v2) is limited to chess.com (and their implementation is extremely buggy) unfortunately.

google en passant

.. it's not that extremely buggy. Once in a while you can't move or something, but then a page refresh solves it. Less than in 1 game out of 1000 games or so. (I just estimated according to the number of my games and memories.)

I'm referring to starting games - I've had no end of trouble getting 2v2 working properly there.

Does freechess.org still work? It's had bughouse for decades.

Ah yes, playing it in the library at school was good fun, in Denmark it was mostly called Babyskak.

It was also an excellent way of introducing chess in a fun way, much like Duck Chess.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bughouse_chess

You might also look at Japanese chess (Shogi) - when you capture a piece, you take it off the board and then can drop it back on the board as your piece as a future move. The pieces are not colored, so you tell who has which piece by their orientation.

Now I want a chess set with this guy as the duck: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Balaenic...

(I feel it should be grey not yellow.)

One of hundreds (thousands?) of chess variants. For more you might be interested in https://www.chessvariants.com/alphabet.html (I am not one of the authors.)

This is like pole chess from Piers Anthony books. My buddies and I used to play pole chess a good bit.

Each player has a pole, and you can place it or pick it up with a move. Nothing can move to through or capture the pole.

It leads to more draws but also weird and fun tactics.

Here's what Duck Chess is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCXw-RAmcpA&t=133s

This is a fun chess variation. Id like to see this on Lichess.

I just received my copy of Iro today [1], which I backed on Kickstarter. It's similar to checkers and I'm enjoying it so far. I think I might need to try it with a little rubber duck.

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/khanat/iro

Interesting! Not sure I would describe it as a draughts variant, given that the pieces all move differently. It seems like it would be very hard to evaluate a board position but maybe you get used to all the colors.

Curious to think about the endgame implications of this. I am wondering if queen and king is even enough to win against a king only.

I guess the winning pattern is to force the opposing king to move into your king at the edge of the board but not clear how to march the king into a corner if he has an untakeable blocker to move every turn. Any ideas?

You can utilize the fact that the other player HAS to move the duck each turn.... put it in the place you want to go, then they have to move it somewhere else on their turn.

As a Greek I find the "@" notation very serendipitous, since for some obscure reason, the name used for this symbol in Greek is "παπάκι" (papaki), which means "duckling".

> In passing, we note that if it were Black to move in the above position, he would have an immediate win with Qxg2@f3, followed by capturing White’s king next turn

I don’t understand. Since there is no check in duck chess, couldn’t white king just capture black queen (Kxg2) following this move?

The white king would then be taken by the knight.

g2 is defended by black's knight, so after Kxg2, black captures the king and wins with Nxg2.

Yes but there is no check. So why can’t you move your king into check? You are not moving him into checkmate, after all

You can move your king into check, so white’s move of king takes queen is legal. But, it still is losing because black then plays knight takes king.

Thanks I missed the rule where game ends by king capture, not checkmate

Some chess variants are amazing. Here you can promote a pawn on 5th rank: https://youtu.be/LIbMbOjcoxo

I guess Knights (which can jump the Duck) just became more valuable.

This is damn genius and seems pretty fun! The fact the new figure is in joint control is mind-blowing and throws most traditional strategies out of the window hahaha

That's a brilliant idea - must try it out with the 10-year old here (and get beaten as per usual) :)

Duck to Queen's Bishop 3!

I did not expect to see my old chess clubs president from a small town in England pop up on the front page of HN!

This isn't clear from the directions: there is no fixed starting position for the duck. Rather, white places the duck on any empty square after their opening move.

Is there anywhere you can play it online?

I was hoping for a Battle Chess mod that adds the duck back.

Battle Chess needed lasers: https://c64online.com/c64-games/laser-chess/

Anyone going to build an online version?

Haha, best chess mod I've seen

too bad there's no implementation where I can play this online

The language describing the rules is not 100% clear:

> Each player’s turn always consists of two actions: (1) making a standard chess move, and then (2) moving the duck to any empty square on the board. (The duck must be moved – it cannot be left where it is.)

You have to make your move, and move the duck. Do you have to do them in that order? (ie, is it legal to move the duck first, then your piece?)

I suspect there is an implied "in order" there, otherwise the impact of the duck-block is not as profound.

It might be hair splitting, but I've seen rules fights on smaller points!

edit: yea, I need to read more carefully. I missed the "and then" which is the clarification I was after. Thank you for pointing that out.

Yeah, the "and then" implies you first move and then move the duck. At least that's how it makes sense to me. That way you're blocking your opponent's move with the duck.

On this planet step 1 is followed by step 2.

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