Show HN: Chess but you make your own starting position
chess39.com
chess39.com
Some feature requests:
The material counter definetively needs a bar too.
It's not clear when I selected a piece to move it, they need more highlighting.
A visual icon for check and checkmate.
When can I castle? When can I move a pawn two squares?
Option to repeat my last starting position. The computer position too?
It woud be interesting to see which starting positions are more popular. If you have alot of spare computing power to organize a tournament between starting positions. (I expect something complicated like a Nash equilibrium and optimal starting strategies that are a probablilistic mix of starting positions.)
[1] spoiler alert: drop a few pawn and upgrade the knight and bishops to rook, double them on the side and hope the oposite king has not enougt protection for a frontal atack.
It would be nice to add the initial position to the transcript, and also a permalink to share the game.
Castling is possible if king and rook were spawned on the standard chess positions and hadn’t moved (e.g. king on e1 and rook on a1)
Pawns move two squares from the second row only.
There is an option to save your setup (for registered users) and also option to set up for computer (in computer settings).
Tournament is a super idea, neat way to make a theory of setups:)
Awesome ideas with the initial position transcript and permalinks, we’ll work on the implementation!
About pawns, it's strange because if it starts at the the first rank it can move 1-2-1-1-1-... What about no pawns in the first rank?
Anyway, the game is fine as it is and I'm a professional chess player and I'm not sure if they can be added to the engine.
PS: Another win and a few draws (and a lot of loses) with: 12 paws in the white squares in ranks 2,3,4 and 9 bishops in the black squares. I'm trying to swap a bishop for a rook or knight or a bishop of the other color, to avoid stupid draws.
PS2: I guess 8 pawns in the second rank and 8 bishops in the third rank and something to complete would be nice, but I had not tried it.
> I'm a professional chess player
I'm NOT a professional chess player
Nice setup ideas! Beating the bot is quite hard, so maybe you are professional? :) If you want to make the bot even smarter, you can increase depth and think time in settings
* I like the idea of using a lot of Bishops to snap a Queen or Rook in the first move. That's all my plan! And then try to lose material slowly, and win before the computer can compensate the difference.
* Looking at one of the fists game of Starcraft of AlphaStar, I guess that a lot of Bishops are overpowered for the computer, but difficult to use by a human. They are nice for the first few moves, but later they are too difficult to use for humans.
* A set of 13 Knight is probably better for the computer. It may make Magnus cry like a baby.
* I'm still surprised that Stockfish is so good in ridiculous scenarios.
It depends on the current computer method that usually puts a Queen and a Rook on a vulnerable starting position, so I guess it can be counter.
Anyway, the bot plays badly when it is hopeless, like after loosing 2 Queens in exchange of 2 Bishops. At my level of play, the opponent can always make a mistake, so even in stupid bad situations a good idea is not to trade material when loosing. I'm not sure if it's possible to modify the bot to assume there is always a hope. (Anyway, the bot target my Bishops of the color with the smaller amount. If there are only one color of Bishops it's a draw.)
Play against computer, with a friend, or multiplayer
39 is the total in standard chess - if you sum up values of a queen, 2 rooks, 2 bishops, 2 knights, and 8 pawns the result is 39. King should be on board but doesn’t count towards the total since it’s basically infinite
In computer settings you can toggle manual setup for computer, which allows you to set up for computer
You can also let computer play against itself! Make two setups and see which one is stronger