This video aims to beat the hardest difficulty as quickly as possible. On hardest difficulty, the CPU is not going to fall for easy opening traps like the scholar's mate...Unless we exploit a glitch.
This movie uses the take back glitch to perform 2 moves in a row and allow for a "4 movie" checkmate.
In order to this, you must perform 3 moves past the intended move, take back 3 times during the cpu's turn, let the CPU make a move and then do another take back. It will now be the same position but your turn.
The CPU takes a LONG time to move, and a lot of the time savings in this move is around performing moves that avoid the cpu taking a "full cycle" move. All except one move are shortened in some way. This is done by doing things that allow obvious moves such as checking the king, hanging a queen, and doing generally terrible moves.
Believe it or not, luck is manipulated in this movie. When performing the take back glitch, the queen is hanging. However, it is quite likely the CPU still makes a full cycle decision. If you take back on the correct frame, it will get it to somehow see the hanging queen sooner and save several minutes of thinking.
Ground Rules
There is a lot of chicanery possible in this version of the game. In order to better define "hardest difficulty" some ground rules have to be established. This movie adheres to the following rules:
- Level 5 difficulty (the highest)
- 3D at all times (This promotes unique strategies compared to standard chess as animations have to be considered)
- No pressing start to force the CPU to move (I'd call this fair game on lowest difficulty, but it destroys the notion of beating the most difficult CPU)
- 1 player vs CPU at all times (who would just pick 2 CPUs just to lower input time???)
- Take backs are allowed, obviously
History
I collaborated with
Dacicus a long time ago on the
proof of concept of this idea. That resulted in a 30 minute movie. This movie is significantly faster by reworking the moves to minimize CPU thinking.
Notes
I tried variations of this mate with 1. e3, or moving the queen to f3 or h5 on move 2, but this ended up the fastest that I found.
Entertainment value
It's not 43 days of driving in a desert but this is just about the most boring possible TAS to watch.
adelikat: Replaced movie file with one that is 5917 frames faster. Used a 2+2 takeback pattern instead of 3+1 so that the required CPU move is on Kxf7 which is the fastest CPU move. Also this new movie uses NesHawk.
arkiandruski: After discussing with the other judges, we have decided that 3d mode counts as a different mode of play under our rules. We can tell that the mode introduces some unique challenges which change the gameplay, mostly centered around reducing the animation time.
We have also decided that this run is hardest difficulty and the decision to let the AI think until fully ready is a way to enforce the hardest difficulty. As such accepting to Standard.
