Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Pages: [1] 2  All

Author Topic: David Sirlin vs. Chess  (Read 12824 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Kirian

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 7096
  • Shuffle iT Username: Kirian
  • An Unbalanced Equation
  • Respect: +9411
    • View Profile
David Sirlin vs. Chess
« on: July 21, 2013, 12:38:37 pm »
0

Not content with copying and mangling Reiner Knizia's mechanics, David Sirline has decided to reboot... chess.

http://kotaku.com/well-thank-god-someones-finally-making-the-sequel-to-849419981

(Apparently he originally published these "rules" in 2010, but now it's going to be a video game exclusive to... Ouya.  For the 100 people who bought an Ouya box.)
Logged
Kirian's Law of f.DS jokes:  Any sufficiently unexplained joke is indistinguishable from serious conversation.

Watno

  • Margrave
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2745
  • Shuffle iT Username: Watno
  • Respect: +2982
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2013, 01:00:51 pm »
0

Quote
It will feature six different armies (one of them is not the Civil War set from the Franklin Mint), instead of the standard chess set. That means Chess 2 will involve 21 different matchups.

That sounds like a a calculation done by Goko.
Logged

Drab Emordnilap

  • Torturer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1832
  • Shuffle iT Username: Drab Emordnilap
  • Luther Bell Hendricks V
  • Respect: +1886
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2013, 01:57:34 pm »
+2

Quote
It will feature six different armies (one of them is not the Civil War set from the Franklin Mint), instead of the standard chess set. That means Chess 2 will involve 21 different matchups.

That sounds like a a calculation done by Goko.

What's wrong with this math? 6 items makes 15 pairs (ignoring duplicates like AB to BA), plus the 6 pairs of two people using the same army.
Logged

Watno

  • Margrave
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2745
  • Shuffle iT Username: Watno
  • Respect: +2982
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #3 on: July 21, 2013, 03:37:22 pm »
0

Ah, I didn't consider the possibility of both players playing the same army.
Logged

Tables

  • Margrave
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2816
  • Build more Bridges in the King's Court!
  • Respect: +3347
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2013, 04:25:08 pm »
+2



I mean, it could end up good, but... it's Sirlin, so, nah.
Logged
...spin-offs are still better for all of the previously cited reasons.
But not strictly better, because the spinoff can have a different cost than the expansion.

dondon151

  • 2012 US Champion
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2522
  • Respect: +1856
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #5 on: July 21, 2013, 04:30:19 pm »
+2

Isn't there already Chess960?
Logged

Tables

  • Margrave
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2816
  • Build more Bridges in the King's Court!
  • Respect: +3347
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #6 on: July 21, 2013, 04:38:49 pm »
+1

Isn't there already Chess960?

I'd say this is more akin to Betza Chess/Chess with different armies, but yes.
Logged
...spin-offs are still better for all of the previously cited reasons.
But not strictly better, because the spinoff can have a different cost than the expansion.

Drab Emordnilap

  • Torturer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1832
  • Shuffle iT Username: Drab Emordnilap
  • Luther Bell Hendricks V
  • Respect: +1886
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #7 on: July 21, 2013, 08:11:40 pm »
0

I mean, it could end up good, but... it's Sirlin, so, nah.
To be fair, this game dates back a few years; it's only news now because of the ouya implementation. Chess 2 is a fun game.
Logged

UmbrageOfSnow

  • Moneylender
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 167
  • Shuffle iT Username: Umbrageofsnow
  • Respect: +301
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #8 on: July 21, 2013, 11:14:17 pm »
+4

Given the gigantic number of chess variants out there, I have trouble believing that someone finally "fixed" chess.

And I was reading what he thought was wrong with it, and frankly it seems like this guy is just terribad at chess and doesn't really get why it would appeal to people.

This bidding mechanic thing seems awful.  I mean one of the fundamental things about chess that makes it interesting is that it's perfect information.  Do all games have to be like chess, no.  But if you're going to call yourself "Chess 2" you ought to at least try to capture the spirit, basic feel of the game.

I've lost interest in chess myself over the years, but I used to love it.  I'm not that great, and yeah, memorizing openings is one of the things I dislike, but adding a bunch of unpredictability with a bidding mechanic and having teleporting pieces that can go anywhere and all this just seem so far from the whole bloody idea of chess.

It's like someone's kid brother got sick of losing to his older brother who was too good at looking a lot of moves ahead, so he "fixed" the game with a bunch of idiotic house rules to make it less predictable.

That predictability, that you can see the patterns of how things move and study all the options in a given situation, that's what people mean when they talk about the beauty of chess.  This seems like it tosses all that out to make it more like fucking starcraft.
Logged

qmech

  • Torturer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1918
  • Shuffle iT Username: qmech
  • What year is it?
  • Respect: +2320
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #9 on: July 22, 2013, 05:01:09 am »
+2

Quote
From:   Sirlin Games (sirlin@alum.mit.edu)
Sent:   XX July 2013 XXXXXX
To:    XXXXX@hotmail.co.uk
   
Be careful! This sender has failed our fraud detection checks.

Dear XXXXX,
 
All of the items from order #XXXXX have now been shipped:
 
1x Chess 2 Print-and-play
Logged

qmech

  • Torturer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1918
  • Shuffle iT Username: qmech
  • What year is it?
  • Respect: +2320
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #10 on: July 28, 2013, 07:07:13 am »
+1

OK, I finally received the rules PDF.  Here's a summary.

Extra win condition Get your King into your opponent's half of the board.

Duelling When a piece captures another piece the defender can start a duel.  This costs a token if the attacker is a higher-ranked piece than the defender.  Each player chooses 0, 1 or 2 tokens secretly.  The player with the most tokens wins: ties are broken by the points value of the pieces involved.  If the defender wins they take the attacker down with them.  There are some poorly explained edges cases that I can't be bothered to understand.  Tokens are one use only: you start with 3 and can get more by capturing pawns.

There are 5 new "armies".

Nemesis The Queen can only attack or be attacked by Kings.  Pawns can always move one square closer to the enemy King (even if that means going backwards or sideways) but capture as usual.  Pawns cannot move two squares as their first move.

Empowered Knights, Bishops and Rooks gain the powers of adjacent friendly Knights, Bishops and Rooks.  The Queen moves as a King.

Reaper The Queen can move and capture anywhere except your opponent's back row.  It can't give check.  Rooks can teleport, but can't capture or be captured.

Two Kings  The Queen is a second King: either can be checkmated, and both must cross the centre line for the alternative win condition.  The two Kings can "Whirlwind Attack", taking out all adjacent pieces.  After each of your turns you may take an extra turn on which you may only use a King.

Animals The Knight can capture its own pieces.  The Bishop can only move two squares, but if it captures it returns to where it started.  The Rook can only move three squares, and captures by moving all three and taking everything in its path.  It can only be captured by pieces at most 2 squares away.  The Queen is Rook+Knight, rather than Rook+Bishop.

None of the new teams can castle, but all can take en passant.  Pawn promotion is to any non-King piece on your own team.  Stalemate is a loss for the player who cannot move.

I don't like the sound of duelling, but otherwise it looks like it might be worth a go.  Some of the teams look bad if you just think about checkmate (there's not enough compensation for the nerfed Queen in Empowered and the nerfed pieces in Animals), but maybe the new powers are more useful if you're trying to escort your King somewhere.
Logged

popsofctown

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5477
  • Respect: +2860
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #11 on: July 29, 2013, 02:35:40 am »
+14

Sirlin is preoccupied with including "Yomi" in his games.  "Yomi" is his term for rock-paper-scissors predictions.  He asserts that rock-paper-scissors is flawed and uninteresting because all three options have equal value, but believes that when players must choose between rock-paper-scissors or rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock and there is a different weighting (Maybe you get bonus points for winning with paper, etc), suddenly it becomes a good gameplay mechanic. 

It can be a fun mechanic in realtime games, like fighting games he comes from.  Turnbased games tend to make the mechanic far less interesting, because you have time to figure out the Nash equilibrium, and then randomly select a strategy based on that, be that with a crude RNG in your brain, or one you have on your desktop, or just a pseudorandom pattern you get into a habit of following that will take a while to catch on to.  The player who is weaker at getting into the other guys head in "rock-paper-scissor" is inherently motivated to use random number generation, or random number generation emulation, to select his strategy.

Note that if you design a computer to play one of Sirlin's wonderful games, it can just use a random number generator and play the nash equilibriums straight.  A pattern we find amongst game mechanics that actually make games fun and beautiful is the inability for computers to follow along.  It's a mechanic computers deal with rather easily, yet Sirlin thinks it improves things.

Chess 2 starts out being a pretty reasonable faerie chess thing.  He's not the first guy to do faerie chess.  But then he ruins his faerie chess by cramming the yomi he is preoccupied with down its throat.

What makes Yomi even worse than being devoid of real value is that Yomi has a variance cost.  When good gameplay mechanics have a variance cost it can be worth it, Swindler adds things you didn't have to think about before, the possibility of Chapel-fizzle leads to innovations like the Chapel-Baron opening for hedging bets, etc.  Yomi doesn't add value, and it still has the variance cost, whichever player invokes RNG for their strategy selections invites variance to the game, which can make it harder to get consistent results.  This isn't even thoughtful variance like, Treasure Map is variant, maybe i should pick a more reliable strategy.   The random part happens after the Nash equilibriums are already calculated, after you decide what risk are involved in each of the choices and set up a ratio for them.  It's just a pure matter of what player 2's random number generation method spits out.  (Of course, if player did his Nash equilibriums wrong, then there is a skill factor there, but you get the same kind of calculations in perfect information turn based games, that's not a unique component.)

One of Sirlin's big games is called "Yomi", and it is not just a game sprinkled with Yomi, it is a game packed to the bring and chock full of yomi.  In factor, the only other mechanic in the game is card counting, pretty much.  It is one of the most painful games I've ever played, and it is remarkably unenjoyabe regardless of whether you win or lose.  The only game of his that I enjoyed at all was Puzzle Strike, which lacked much yomi probably because it was too hard to cram it in there.  Of course, he managed to screw that game up too, and then I found out about the original Dominion and how it's 10 times more suitable for a tournament environment, even if you open up a box of Base and don't change a single rule, and that is a rant involving the story of how I ended up being so active on this here forum.
Logged

LastFootnote

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 7495
  • Shuffle iT Username: LastFootnote
  • Respect: +10721
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #12 on: July 29, 2013, 11:44:42 am »
+4

And I was reading what he thought was wrong with it, and frankly it seems like this guy is just terribad at chess and doesn't really get why it would appeal to people.



It's like someone's kid brother got sick of losing to his older brother who was too good at looking a lot of moves ahead, so he "fixed" the game with a bunch of idiotic house rules to make it less predictable.

The real irony here is that Sirlin is incredibly vocal about playing a game as it exists rather than making up house rules just because you can't compete.

Quote from: David Sirlin
If you are playing to win, you should play the game everyone else is playing, not the home-made Akuma vs. Akuma game that no one plays.

Playing to win indeed.
Logged

Kirian

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 7096
  • Shuffle iT Username: Kirian
  • An Unbalanced Equation
  • Respect: +9411
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #13 on: July 29, 2013, 12:24:21 pm »
0

And I was reading what he thought was wrong with it, and frankly it seems like this guy is just terribad at chess and doesn't really get why it would appeal to people.



It's like someone's kid brother got sick of losing to his older brother who was too good at looking a lot of moves ahead, so he "fixed" the game with a bunch of idiotic house rules to make it less predictable.

The real irony here is that Sirlin is incredibly vocal about playing a game as it exists rather than making up house rules just because you can't compete.

Quote from: David Sirlin
If you are playing to win, you should play the game everyone else is playing, not the home-made Akuma vs. Akuma game that no one plays.

Playing to win indeed.

I actually quite liked his playing to win article, and totally hadn't thought about how unlike that article this "chess sequel" bullshit is.
Logged
Kirian's Law of f.DS jokes:  Any sufficiently unexplained joke is indistinguishable from serious conversation.

theory

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3603
  • Respect: +6121
    • View Profile
    • Dominion Strategy
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #14 on: July 31, 2013, 12:04:25 pm »
+3

It's just so patronizing for Sirlin to list these 'problems' of chess and try to fix them:

1) Chess's "boring", "drawing", "dictated-by-opening-memorization" nature exists only at the highest levels of play, where it is taken for granted that people have spent years or decades of their life studying the game.  It is not remotely a concern for anyone not at that level. 

2) Does Chess 2 Electric Boogaloo honestly address these problems?  Do you really think that if you subjected it to hundreds of years of analysis that it would hold up as well?
Logged

UmbrageOfSnow

  • Moneylender
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 167
  • Shuffle iT Username: Umbrageofsnow
  • Respect: +301
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #15 on: July 31, 2013, 12:08:13 pm »
+4

For that matter, I've never understood why drawing is such a problem for people.

The ability to force a stalemate is one of the most interesting aspects to chess.  Rather than having a luck element or some artificial catchup mechanic, the reason not to give up when you are losing is that you can often force a stalemate if you play well enough.  I love that feeling of fighting for a stalemate when I don't have a chance to win, but I can try keep my opponent from winning too.
Logged

sudgy

  • Cartographer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3431
  • Shuffle iT Username: sudgy
  • It's pronounced "SOO-jee"
  • Respect: +2706
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #16 on: July 31, 2013, 01:51:43 pm »
0

For that matter, I've never understood why drawing is such a problem for people.

The ability to force a stalemate is one of the most interesting aspects to chess.  Rather than having a luck element or some artificial catchup mechanic, the reason not to give up when you are losing is that you can often force a stalemate if you play well enough.  I love that feeling of fighting for a stalemate when I don't have a chance to win, but I can try keep my opponent from winning too.

I remember one time when I just had my King and my opponent just had a King, Bishop and Knight.  While they were trying to figure out how to checkmate me, I managed to capture one of the two.   I felt pretty good about that.
Logged
If you're wondering what my avatar is, watch this.

Check out my logic puzzle blog!

   Quote from: sudgy on June 31, 2011, 11:47:46 pm

UmbrageOfSnow

  • Moneylender
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 167
  • Shuffle iT Username: Umbrageofsnow
  • Respect: +301
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #17 on: July 31, 2013, 02:18:27 pm »
0

For that matter, I've never understood why drawing is such a problem for people.

The ability to force a stalemate is one of the most interesting aspects to chess.  Rather than having a luck element or some artificial catchup mechanic, the reason not to give up when you are losing is that you can often force a stalemate if you play well enough.  I love that feeling of fighting for a stalemate when I don't have a chance to win, but I can try keep my opponent from winning too.

I remember one time when I just had my King and my opponent just had a King, Bishop and Knight.  While they were trying to figure out how to checkmate me, I managed to capture one of the two.   I felt pretty good about that.

Exactly!  Those moments where you are losing and prevent them from winning are great fun.  It's all skill, rather than games that have some mechanic to make it so you can catch up whenever.  I'm not getting down on the VP card stalling in Dominion, by the way, I think that's very clever and interesting, but I am somewhat thinking of Puzzle Strike and games like that.

If I screw up, in a deep strategy game, I sholudn't have much chance to win (no matter how good I am at rock-paper-scissors or bidding).  But having that chance to screw up your opponent's chance to win keeps the game interesting.
Logged

popsofctown

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5477
  • Respect: +2860
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #18 on: July 31, 2013, 11:32:25 pm »
0

RE: Theory

Insisting that opening memorization is only a problem at the highest levels of play leaves me a choice between feeling flattered or feeling skeptical, and I'm going to go with skeptical.  I am a remarkably mediocre chess player and opening memorization is key at my level of play.  I am too lazy to memorize openings because it is somewhat of a chore.  Some people get excited about it but it is something that lets them get at the fun parts of the game, it's a chore in Starcraft 2 too.  In both games, if I don't use an opening that I pulled out of a can, I'm looking at like a 30% chance at winning.  The guy I usually play wrecks me using unusual opens that I haven't memorized the opening to, since I have very little book knowledge about gambit openings.

Adding 6 armies (I assume original chess team is still allowed?) means you have 49 matchups.  But by picking a favorite army you eliminate the need to study 42 of them.  So it will be 7 times harder to memorize the best opening strategies, which is feasible and still going to be the best way to win.
This falls way behind chess960, which has 960 possibilities, and is thus enough to force players to dispense with attempting to memorize openings.

The fact that memorized opening led to such popularity for chess960, even among grandmasters, I think validates that as a concern for improving chess.  But I strongly agree with you that he didn't help with that.


As for drawing, that's a matter of taste, and what you want out of the game.  If you like to play games casually, drawing is great, there is an outcome between winning and losing and ways to shoot for it.  But if you enjoy tournaments, then when someone draws in finals you still need to have a way to figure out who gets the trophy.  I have dealt with lots of drawing in MTG, and it is really not a fun thing.  Oh, and your point about drawing being restricted to higher level play, that is pretty legitimate, it is much rarer to see stalemates at lower levels.


re Umbrage:

Playing for stalemate is an interesting aspect of chess, I agree.  In the sense that you use the mechanics of chess in an interesting and unique way, stuff like checking the king to force your opponent to kill your pieces. 

I don't think having a value between win and lose is worth the cost of easily declaring winners when you need a winner.  I'd like to define stalemates in which a player has no legal moves as a victory for the player with no legal moves, to explore the game mechanic.  "If you're losing, you don't deserve to come back all the way" is a flawed way of thinking.  If you are playing a version of chess where it is easy to come all the way back, then you are never really losing that badly.  It's a moving target.

Logged

qmech

  • Torturer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1918
  • Shuffle iT Username: qmech
  • What year is it?
  • Respect: +2320
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #19 on: August 01, 2013, 02:55:35 am »
+1

I don't know whether it will work, but the Duelling mechanic is specifically intended to make opening book memorisation infeasible.
Logged

popsofctown

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5477
  • Respect: +2860
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #20 on: August 01, 2013, 02:18:31 pm »
0

I don't know whether it will work, but the Duelling mechanic is specifically intended to make opening book memorisation infeasible.
Really?  That's a little absurd.  There are very few captures in most openings.  In a dramatic bloodbath of an opening, there are maybe two captures.  That could give you 2^2=4 times as much to memorize per opening, still not reaching infeasibility.
Logged

sudgy

  • Cartographer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3431
  • Shuffle iT Username: sudgy
  • It's pronounced "SOO-jee"
  • Respect: +2706
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #21 on: August 01, 2013, 02:21:41 pm »
+1

The way to stop memorizing openings is to randomize the starting setup (same for both people, of course).
Logged
If you're wondering what my avatar is, watch this.

Check out my logic puzzle blog!

   Quote from: sudgy on June 31, 2011, 11:47:46 pm

popsofctown

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5477
  • Respect: +2860
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #22 on: August 01, 2013, 09:34:49 pm »
+2

The way to stop memorizing openings is to randomize the starting setup (same for both people, of course).
Yes, that's called Chess960, the most proper name for Fischer Random.  It's been mentioned a couple times in thread.  960 openings is enough to make memorization infeasible.
Logged

Kirian

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 7096
  • Shuffle iT Username: Kirian
  • An Unbalanced Equation
  • Respect: +9411
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #23 on: August 02, 2013, 12:32:19 am »
+7

The way to stop memorizing openings is to randomize the starting setup (same for both people, of course).
Yes, that's called Chess960, the most proper name for Fischer Random.  It's been mentioned a couple times in thread.  960 openings is enough to make memorization infeasible.

Whatever, I open Silver/Silver.
Logged
Kirian's Law of f.DS jokes:  Any sufficiently unexplained joke is indistinguishable from serious conversation.

sitnaltax

  • Apprentice
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 284
  • Respect: +490
    • View Profile
Re: David Sirlin vs. Chess
« Reply #24 on: August 04, 2013, 11:05:47 am »
+1

I don't know whether it will work, but the Duelling mechanic is specifically intended to make opening book memorisation infeasible.
Really?  That's a little absurd.  There are very few captures in most openings.  In a dramatic bloodbath of an opening, there are maybe two captures.  That could give you 2^2=4 times as much to memorize per opening, still not reaching infeasibility.

But many times, the threat of a capture is important to the opening--it's why it takes one path instead of another. If that threat is blunted (or sharpened, or changed in a strange way by variance) that adds more possible paths that involve captures, more complexity and more to consider.

I'm not convinced that Duelling is the right mechanism for the, but it seems reasonable to me that it could be.
Logged
Pages: [1] 2  All
 

Page created in 0.094 seconds with 21 queries.