Tablebase
An endgame tablebase is a computerized database that contains precalculated exhaustive analysis of chess endgame positions. It is typically used by a computer chess engine during play, or by a human or computer that is retrospectively analysing a game that has already been played. The tablebase contains the game-theoretical value (win, loss, or draw) in each possible position, and how many moves it would take to achieve that result with perfect play. Thus, the tablebase acts as an oracle, always providing the optimal moves. Typically the database records each possible position with certain pieces remaining on the board, and the best moves with White to move and with Black to move. Tablebases are generated by retrograde analysis, working backward from a checkmated position. By 2005, all chess positions with up to six pieces, including the two kings, had been solved. By August 2012, tablebases had solved chess for almost every position with up to seven pieces, but the positi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Computer Chess
Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysis, entertainment and training. Computer chess applications that play at the level of a chess master or higher are available on hardware from supercomputers to smart phones. Standalone chess-playing machines are also available. Stockfish, GNU Chess, Fruit, and other free open source applications are available for various platforms. Computer chess applications, whether implemented in hardware or software, utilize different strategies than humans to choose their moves: they use heuristic methods to build, search and evaluate trees representing sequences of moves from the current position and attempt to execute the best such sequence during play. Such trees are typically quite large, thousands to millions of nodes. The computational speed of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chess Endgame
In chess and other similar games, the endgame (or end game or ending) is the stage of the game when few pieces are left on the board. The line between middlegame and endgame is often not clear, and may occur gradually or with the quick exchange of a few pairs of pieces. The endgame, however, tends to have different characteristics from the middlegame, and the players have correspondingly different strategic concerns. In particular, pawns become more important as endgames often revolve around attempting to promote a pawn by advancing it to the eighth . The king, which normally should stay hidden during the game should become active in the endgame, as it can help escort pawns to the promotion square, attack enemy pawns, protect other pieces, and restrict the movement of the enemy king. All chess positions with up to seven pieces on the board have been solved, that is, the outcome (win, loss, or draw) of best play by both sides is known, and textbooks and reference works teach t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chess Endgame
In chess and other similar games, the endgame (or end game or ending) is the stage of the game when few pieces are left on the board. The line between middlegame and endgame is often not clear, and may occur gradually or with the quick exchange of a few pairs of pieces. The endgame, however, tends to have different characteristics from the middlegame, and the players have correspondingly different strategic concerns. In particular, pawns become more important as endgames often revolve around attempting to promote a pawn by advancing it to the eighth . The king, which normally should stay hidden during the game should become active in the endgame, as it can help escort pawns to the promotion square, attack enemy pawns, protect other pieces, and restrict the movement of the enemy king. All chess positions with up to seven pieces on the board have been solved, that is, the outcome (win, loss, or draw) of best play by both sides is known, and textbooks and reference works teach t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chess Tablebase Query
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games, such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess). The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh-century India. The rules of chess as we know them today emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, with standardization and universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide. Chess is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no use of dice or cards. It is played on a chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. At the start, each player controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fifty-move Rule
The fifty-move rule in chess states that a player can claim a draw if no has been made and no pawn has been moved in the last fifty moves (for this purpose a "move" consists of a player completing a turn followed by the opponent completing a turn). The purpose of this rule is to prevent a player with no chance of winning from obstinately continuing to play indefinitely or seeking to win by tiring the opponent. Chess positions with only a few pieces can be " solved", that is, the outcome of best play for both sides can be determined by exhaustive analysis; and if the outcome is a win for one side or the other (rather than a draw), it is of interest to know whether the defending side can hold out long enough to invoke the fifty-move rule. The simplest common endings, called the basic checkmates, such as king and queen versus king, can all be won in well under 50 moves. However, in the 20th century it was discovered that certain endgame positions are winnable but require more tha ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Solved Game
A solved game is a game whose outcome (win, lose or draw) can be correctly predicted from any position, assuming that both players play perfectly. This concept is usually applied to abstract strategy games, and especially to games with full information and no element of chance; solving such a game may use combinatorial game theory and/or computer assistance. Overview A two-player game can be solved on several levels: ;Ultra-weak : Prove whether the first player will win, lose or draw from the initial position, given perfect play on both sides. This can be a non-constructive proof (possibly involving a strategy-stealing argument) that need not actually determine any moves of the perfect play. ;Weak : Provide an algorithm that secures a win for one player, or a draw for either, against any possible moves by the opponent, from the beginning of the game. ;Strong : Provide an algorithm that can produce perfect moves from any position, even if mistakes have already been made on on ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Perfect Play
A solved game is a game whose outcome (win, lose or draw) can be correctly predicted from any position, assuming that both players play perfectly. This concept is usually applied to abstract strategy games, and especially to games with full information and no element of chance; solving such a game may use combinatorial game theory and/or computer assistance. Overview A two-player game can be solved on several levels: ;Ultra-weak : Prove whether the first player will win, lose or draw from the initial position, given perfect play on both sides. This can be a non-constructive proof (possibly involving a strategy-stealing argument) that need not actually determine any moves of the perfect play. ;Weak : Provide an algorithm that secures a win for one player, or a draw for either, against any possible moves by the opponent, from the beginning of the game. ;Strong : Provide an algorithm that can produce perfect moves from any position, even if mistakes have already been made on one or ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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KingsRow
KingsRow is a strong checkers and draughts engine. It was released by Ed Gilbert in 2000. The checkers engine can be used with the CheckerBoard GUI. The engine is available as freeware. History In the only Computer Checkers World Championship, KingsRow took second place behind Nemesis. KingsRow was stronger than Cake++ in the early years. Cake++ finally caught up with KingsRow and gradually became stronger. It competed a 624-game match against Cake++ on Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden ... 2004; Cake++ won 3 to 1, with 620 games ending in a draw. On July 17, 2005, Ed Gilbert completed building a 10-piece endgame database for use with KingsRow. A version for Italian checkers with a nine-piece endgame tablebase is available, too. Draughts version ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Checkmate
Checkmate (often shortened to mate) is any game position in chess and other chess-like games in which a player's king is in check (threatened with ) and there is no possible escape. Checkmating the opponent wins the game. In chess, the king is never actually captured—the player loses as soon as the player's king is checkmated. In formal games, it is usually considered good etiquette to resign an inevitably lost game before being checkmated. If a player is not in check but has no legal move, then it is ''stalemate'', and the game immediately ends in a draw. A checkmating move is recorded in algebraic notation using the hash symbol "#", for example: 34.Qg3#. Examples A checkmate may occur in as few as two moves on one side with all of the pieces still on the board (as in Fool's mate, in the opening phase of the game), in a middlegame position (as in the 1956 game called the Game of the Century between Donald Byrne and Bobby Fischer), or after many moves with as few a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Connect Four
Connect Four (also known as Connect 4, Four Up, Plot Four, Find Four, Captain's Mistress, Four in a Row, Drop Four, and Gravitrips in the Soviet Union) is a two-player connection board game, in which the players choose a color and then take turns dropping colored tokens into a seven-column, six-row vertically suspended grid. The pieces fall straight down, occupying the lowest available space within the column. The objective of the game is to be the first to form a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line of four of one's own tokens. Connect Four is a solved game. The first player can always win by playing the right moves. The game was first sold under the ''Connect Four'' trademark by Milton Bradley in February 1974. Gameplay A gameplay example (right), shows the first player starting Connect Four by dropping one of their yellow discs into the center column of an empty game board. The two players then alternate turns dropping one of their discs at a time into an unfilled colum ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Capablanca Chess
Capablanca chess (or Capablanca's chess) is a chess variant invented in the 1920s by World Chess Champion José Raúl Capablanca. It incorporates two new pieces and is played on a 10×8 board. Capablanca believed that chess would be played out in a few decades (meaning games between grandmasters would always end in draws). This threat of "draw death" for chess was his main motivation for creating a more complex version of the game. * The archbishop combines powers of a bishop and a knight. * The chancellor combines powers of a rook and a knight. The new pieces allow new strategies and possibilities that change the game. For example, the archbishop by itself can checkmate a lone king in the corner (when placed diagonally with one square in between). Setup and rules Capablanca proposed two opening setups for Capablanca chess. His final revision placed the archbishop between the and ; the chancellor between the and . The king moves three squares when castling instead of mo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Game Of Chance
A game of chance is in contrast with a game of skill. It is a game whose outcome is strongly influenced by some randomizing device. Common devices used include dice, spinning tops, playing cards, roulette wheels, or numbered balls drawn from a container. A game of chance may be played as gambling if players wage money or anything of monetary value. Alternatively, a game of skill is one in which the outcome is determined mainly by mental or physical skill, rather than chance. While a game of chance may have some skill element to it, chance generally plays a greater role in determining its outcome. A game of skill may also may have elements of chance, but skill plays a greater role in determining its outcome. Gambling is known in nearly all human societies, even though many have passed laws restricting it. Early people used the knucklebones of sheep as dice. Some people develop a psychological addiction to gambling, and will risk even food and shelter to continue. Some gam ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |