Some instructions would be nice; it looks like I do have to move pieces, I'm just dumped into the middle of a game.
edit: Oh, I see, there's a help link ,and "guess white", "guess black" and "guess draw" at the bottom. When you click one, the computer will play until the game is over (or you declare the game to be a draw).
The game seems to be buggy: "King's Indian - Steven Cordy vs Martinez Garcia, Warsaw, 1991" -- it just keeps going in a loop endlessly. Neither the AI nor the game engine seems to be aware of perpetual move draw:
Although I am far, far from a chess expert, it seems like with so many moves left to play, unless you know whether one player is more skilled than the other, one's guess is as good as another's. Might as well guess a coin flip. Maybe if the state of the board was "later into the match" it would be possible to judge whether one side had an advantage and allow you to guess better. Then again, maybe I just suck at reading a chess board and the side with the advantage IS obvious here.
From my understanding, you are not guessing which human player won. Instead, two equal AIs play the remainder of the game and you have to guess which side will win.
> it seems like with so many moves left to play, unless you know whether one player is more skilled than the other, one's guess is as good as another's. Might as well guess a coin flip.
Consider it exercises in intuitionistic positional judgment, rather than a game of "hey try to play this out in your head".
This isn't as much fun as I thought. The engine pursues a primitive attacking strategy, often missing the best moves. I got the first five right, not because I did deep analysis of the position, but because I simply started picking whichever side could jam its queen into some sort of attack in a hurry.
I picked draw on the sixth one, which was an intriguingly well-balanced position -- and the engine managed to turn it into a crazy slaughter-fest within five moves and an eventual 55-move win for white.
With a better engine, this could be quite a good test of chess skill and strategic insight.
It doesn't recognize threefold repetition draw. Also, a couple times I saw it miss some tricky tactics that would have won. Very nice and fun idea with a bit of polish. It
needs a real chess engine.
You're right. But what I saw the computer do was repeat the same position thousands of times in an identical cycle of four moves. A decent AI should stop wasting its time and claim a draw at that point. So maybe this is also an AI strength issue rather than the platform recognizing a draw.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 31.8 ms ] threadedit: Oh, I see, there's a help link ,and "guess white", "guess black" and "guess draw" at the bottom. When you click one, the computer will play until the game is over (or you declare the game to be a draw).
5 Qh6+ Kf6 46 Qg5+ Kg7 47 Qh6+ Kf6 48 Qg5+ Kg7 49 Qh6+ Kf6 50 Qg5+ Kg7 51 Qh6+ Kf6 52 Qg5+ Kg7 53 Qh6+ Kf6 54 Qg5+ Kg7 55 Qh6+ Kf6 56 Qg5+ Kg7 57 Qh6+ Kf6 58 Qg5+ Kg7 59 Qh6+
etc
Consider it exercises in intuitionistic positional judgment, rather than a game of "hey try to play this out in your head".
I picked draw on the sixth one, which was an intriguingly well-balanced position -- and the engine managed to turn it into a crazy slaughter-fest within five moves and an eventual 55-move win for white.
With a better engine, this could be quite a good test of chess skill and strategic insight.
Fun fact: in the Fischer vs. Spassky title match, the judge made an error in awarding Fisher a draw by misinterpreting the rule!