Topic by laughing_gas

Posted: 12/18/2006 12:29 AM

Post subject: The Chessmaster

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laughing_gas

Former player

Joined: 10/1/2006
Posts: 1102
Location: boot_camp

Would anybody be interested in seeing this? I currently completed a run where I (playing as white) beats the computer in 5.5 moves (11 ply) I can also do one playing as the black side, if that is a requirement for a tas of this game.

Borg Collective wrote:

Posted: 12/18/2006 1:31 AM

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FractalFusion

Editor, Skilled player (1939)

Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3247

How different is the SNES version from the NES version?

Posted: 12/18/2006 1:41 AM

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laughing_gas

Former player

Joined: 10/1/2006
Posts: 1102
Location: boot_camp

The game is mostly the same, except for a different board. The computer also seems dumber in the snes version.

Borg Collective wrote:

Posted: 12/18/2006 2:10 AM

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Phil

Active player (410)

Joined: 3/16/2004
Posts: 2623
Location: America, Québec

Why should this game be tased or any other chess games? What a TAS can do better than normal play. Doing your turn as fast as possible, Yes......... Yes............ So cool......... There's no way to be impressive. Even if it's done by some chess champion, it won't be impressive because we can already see such things in some chess games. They have built-in games to show you champions strategy at every year championship tournament.

Posted: 12/18/2006 2:16 AM

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laughing_gas

Former player

Joined: 10/1/2006
Posts: 1102
Location: boot_camp

well, it does manipulate luck, but I agree that it isn't very entertaining to watch. I might not submit it after all. I would like to see a game less than 11 ply on the snes version though! :)

Borg Collective wrote:

Posted: 12/18/2006 4:15 AM

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FractalFusion

Editor, Skilled player (1939)

Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3247

What were your moves and what was the difficulty mode used? There's a newcomer mode that's even easier than the default mode.

Posted: 12/18/2006 4:24 AM

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laughing_gas

Former player

Joined: 10/1/2006
Posts: 1102
Location: boot_camp

I set the computer's skill level to "Newcomer 1", so it wouldn't take too long to think. The moves were: 1) e4 e5 2) f4 exf4 3) Nf3 Ne7 4) Bc4 Nbc6 5) Ng5 Rg8 6) Bxf7++

Borg Collective wrote:

Posted: 12/18/2006 4:56 AM

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FractalFusion

Editor, Skilled player (1939)

Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3247

White wins in 2.5 moves (5 ply) http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/3152/Chessmaster%2C%20The%20%28U%29.smv AVI: http://files.filefront.com/chessmaster_snesavi/;6376444;;/fileinfo.html Moves: 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 Ke7 3. Qxe5# Exactly the same as in the NES version.

Posted: 12/18/2006 5:53 AM

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laughing_gas

Former player

Joined: 10/1/2006
Posts: 1102
Location: boot_camp

Yeah, when I played Qh5 before he usually replied Nf6 or Qf6, but I see you have to wait a little longer before the computer plays Ke7. I guess this project is dead then.

Borg Collective wrote:

Posted: 12/18/2006 2:09 PM

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Comicalflop

Editor, Experienced player (730)

Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA

I remember reading in someone's profile page that a chess TAS would be cool; but it seems to be the case that, quite simply the chess games suck. If there was one game that didn't take long for moves to happen, and had many modes/difficulties/challenges, it'd be better. And also didn't consistently take the same 11 moves to beat no matter for NES or SNES. (the programmers got lazy and used the same formulas maybe?) I guess that means you'll rethink about Mario Party 3, eh? :P

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Posted: 12/18/2006 2:15 PM

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laughing_gas

Former player

Joined: 10/1/2006
Posts: 1102
Location: boot_camp

Maybe. Currently i'm working on mission impossible for the GBC.

Borg Collective wrote:

Posted: 12/19/2006 4:04 AM

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Ersatz

Joined: 8/9/2004
Posts: 139
Location: Washington State

I enjoyed it

Posted: 11/23/2017 6:19 PM

Post subject: The Chessmaster

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

I know that a TAS of a pure chess game being accepted has slimmer chances than a snowball in hell, but anyways, since I am a bit of a computer chess fan, I got curious about how efficiently a modern top chess engine could beat a super-old chess game made for a console like the SNES. I already commented about this in the general forum, but here it is anyway, in its more proper forum. I chose as the ~~victim~~... eh, game The Chessmaster, which appears to be a seriously-made pure chess game for the SNES. And to assist me I chose the currently strongest open source chess engine in existence, Stockfish (ok, there are arguably clones that are even a bit stronger, but I chose the official version nevertheless). Because I want the console game to play at its strongest, not at its weakest, I chose level 13, which is the highest (other than "infinite"). In this first game I allowed The Chessmaster to use its opening book, which got used for the first about 14 moves. Perhaps because of this the game was relatively long, 46 moves, and lasted for over two hours. 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 d6 8. c3 O-O 9. h3 Na5 10. Bc2 c5 11. d4 Qc7 12. Nbd2 cxd4 13. cxd4 Bb7 14. d5 Rac8 15. Bd3 Nd7 16. Nf1 f5 17. b3 fxe4 18. Bxe4 Nc5 19. Bc2 Nd7 20. Ne3 Bf6 21. Bf5 e4 22. Nd4 Qc3 23. Rb1 Qxd4 24. Bxd7 Qxd1 25. Rxd1 Ra8 26. Be6+ Kh8 27. Bd2 Bd8 28. Bb4 Bb6 29. Bxd6 Rfd8 30. Be5 Bc8 31. Nf5 Ra7 32. Rbc1 Bxe6 33. dxe6 Rxd1+ 34. Rxd1 Kg8 35. Rd6 Rb7 36. e7 Kf7 37. Re6 Rxe7 38. Rxe7+ Kg8 39. Re8+ Kf7 40. Nd6+ Kg6 41. Re6+ Kh5 42. g4+ Kg5 43. Nxe4+ Kh4 44. Kg2 Bxf2 45. Rh6+ gxh6 46. Bf6# 1-0 I tried a second game, this time disabling the opening book, to make for a faster game. I also raised the contempt setting of Stockfish to full. This game was over in just 27 moves, and was, according to the game's own clock, 1 hour and 39 minutes long (only counting black's thinking time, which would be pretty much the only thing that would matter in a TAS). 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qa5 4. d4 Nd7 5. Nf3 e5 6. Bd3 Bb4 7. O-O Bxc3 8. bxc3 Qxc3 9. Bd2 Qa3 10. Re1 Ne7 11. Rb1 Qxa2 12. Nxe5 Nxe5 13. Rxe5 Kd8 14. Qe1 Nc6 15. Ra1 Qb2 16. Rd5+ Bd7 17. Bc3 Qb6 18. Rb5 Qxb5 19. Bxb5 Nxd4 20. Bxd7 Nf3+ 21. gxf3 Kxd7 22. Rd1+ Kc8 23. Qe7 b6 24. Rd7 Kb8 25. Rxc7 a5 26. Rb7+ Kc8 27. Qc7# 1-0 It might be interesting to make a TAS out of this, but I suppose it would be rather futile. It would be rather long (even with luck the time would still probably be well over an hour), and doesn't really fit into the acceptable game genres. But one can always dream.

Posted: 11/23/2017 6:30 PM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

I made an animated gif of the second game using an online tool, for easier viewing.

Posted: 11/24/2017 3:52 AM

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samurai_goroh

Editor, Player (53)

Joined: 12/25/2004
Posts: 634
Location: Aguascalientes, Mexico

Have you tried other opening books like perhaps gambits? Just letting the engine play from the start won't pick more aggressive lines which may lead for a faster checkmate. Weak engines love to capture a piece since by counting pieces, they'll think they are ahead and fall for traps when lines are too deep to calculate.

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Posted: 11/24/2017 12:40 PM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

I will try to see if I can induce chessmaster to fall into one of the numerous traps that exist.

Posted: 12/1/2017 9:17 PM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

This is not easy. It's hard to find suitable opening traps that would work with the program. It's also hard to induce it to choose the desired book moves. But one thing, at least, that can be done to shorten a game, when book moves are enabled, is to immediately make a move that's not in the program's opening book. That will throw it off, and make it lose in fewer moves. On the other hand, this only saves a very small amount of time, because book moves are done in seconds anyways, so it only shortens the game in terms of number of moves, not really in terms of consumed time. Anyway, here's a game where Chessmaster is playing white. I chose as the first black move one that was not in its book, so it immediately went into thinking mode. The game is "only" 36 moves long, but still took over 2.5 hours of thinking time by white.

Posted: 12/1/2017 11:40 PM

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Alyosha

He/Him

Editor, Expert player (3532)

Joined: 11/30/2014
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Location: US

This is a fascinating challenge. I wonder if any academic type of work has been done on anything like this. It seems relatively easy to speculate on what strategies might be best suited to win quickly (like samurai goroh has) but I can't think of an easy to determine what game is the fastest possible. Good luck at any rate Warp.

Posted: 12/2/2017 1:03 AM

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Spikestuff

They/Them

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Alyosha wrote:

2 move checkmate as black. Fool's mate. 1. f3 e5 2. g4?? Qh4# I think the movie file to this exists somewhere on the site but I don't remember if that's the SNES version or NES version. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Three move checkmate as White exist as well. However on easiest. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/3152/Chessmaster%2C%20The%20%28U%29.smv 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 Ke7 3. Qxe5# Best of luck getting something impossible on hardest.

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Posted: 12/2/2017 1:07 AM

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£e_Nécroyeur

Skilled player (1651)

Joined: 7/1/2013
Posts: 433

Warp, how does Chessmaster's thinking time after the player makes a non-book move compare to the thinking time after making a book move?

Posted: 12/2/2017 9:20 AM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

£e Nécroyeur wrote:

Chessmaster makes a book move almost immediately, within a second. At the maximum level (ie. level 13) it takes about 4-5 minutes to move on average.

Posted: 12/2/2017 3:02 PM

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goldenband

Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States

My suspicion would be that the best bet for a quick win on the hardest settings is some sort of flaw in the opening book. We'd be looking either for an outright error (e.g. a transcription error), or for a line that we now know ends in an unexpected forced checkmate. Since opening book moves are near-instantaneous, something with mate in under 3-4 moves from the end of the book line could lead to a relatively short TAS. (Even better would be triggering some sort of glitch that causes the CPU to misread its opening book and play arbitrary nonsense moves, of course.) Barring that, the next-best option is likely to be (1) either a closed position in which one player builds an attack on one side -- something computers are notoriously bad at evaluating -- until checkmate is inevitable; or (2) some wild sacrificial line where, again, the CPU wolfs down material until it's too late. Here's a post that features some work in that direction by Eduard Nemeth: https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/honor.htm And SNES Chessmaster is, of course, far far weaker than the engines featured in that post.

Posted: 12/2/2017 7:03 PM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

Btw, is there a way to make BizHawk emulate faster than at 400%? It would make testing faster and easier. (It's somewhat ironic that one would want the emulator to go significantly faster when creating a TAS, but this is a rather special situation... :P ) And also, I wonder if it would be possible to make the emulator pause automatically when the game makes a move. (Not that this is absolutely necessary, as it probably doesn't matter how long the player "thinks", when simply running tests, but if there's an easy way, it would be nice.)

Posted: 12/2/2017 7:09 PM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

goldenband wrote:

I think that the suggestion of finding an opening trap (that's not in Chessmaster's opening book, or if not using the book) could be the most promising approach. It's just that I don't have enough chess opening knowledge to remember such traps by heart, and there are quite tons of them. Also, from some quick testing it seems that it's really hard to induce Chessmaster to select a given opening line. Its randomization does not seem to work by using the timing of user input. (For example, if I let it start with white, it will for some reason start with c4 like 95% of the time. Sometimes it will do e4, or even f4, but I can't figure out how that decision is made. Timing of keypresses seems to have very little to no effect.)

Posted: 12/2/2017 11:15 PM

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Alyosha

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Joined: 11/30/2014
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Warp wrote:

Config -> Speed/Skip -> Unthrottled