All Questions
Tagged with combinatorial-game-theory chess
16 questions
128
votes
13
answers
24k
views
Checkmate in $\omega$ moves?
Is there a chess position with a finite number of pieces on the infinite chess board $\mathbb{Z}^2$ such that White to move has a forced win, but Black can stave off mate for at least $n$ moves for ...
- 5,492
69
votes
7
answers
17k
views
What is a chess piece mathematically?
Historically, the current "standard" set of chess pieces wasn't the only existing alternative or even the standard one. For instance, the famous Al-Suli's Diamond Problem (which remained ...
67
votes
5
answers
10k
views
Decidability of chess on an infinite board
The recent question Do there exist chess positions that require exponentially many moves to reach? of Tim Chow reminds me of a problem I have been interested in. Is chess with finitely many men on an ...
- 50.8k
52
votes
4
answers
10k
views
Do there exist chess positions that require exponentially many moves to reach?
By "chess" here I mean chess played on an $n\times n$ board with an unbounded number of (non-king) pieces. Some care is needed if you want to generalize some of the subtler rules of chess to an $n\...
- 82.7k
47
votes
3
answers
5k
views
Does knight behave like a king in his infinite odyssey?
The Knight's Tour is a well-known mathematical chess problem. There is an extensive amount of research concerning this question in two/higher dimensional finite boards. Here, I would like to tackle ...
40
votes
6
answers
5k
views
Can one make high-level proofs about chess positions?
I realize this question is risky (as the title and the tags indicate), but hopefully I can make it acceptable. If not, and the question cannot be salvaged, I'm sorry and ready to delete it or accept ...
- 1,445
22
votes
5
answers
3k
views
Irreversible chess
Suppose we play a chess-variant, where any finite number of pieces are allowed, and the board is as large as we wish, but only two kings in total. And there is no 50 move-rule, no castling and no ...
- 223
18
votes
0
answers
987
views
Are the moves/rules of standard chess delicately balanced?
(While the world chess championship is in progress in Sochi...)
Is there mathematical evidence that standard chess is somehow
...
- 151k
17
votes
3
answers
2k
views
Traversing the infinite square grid
Starting somewhere on an infinite square grid, is it possible to visit every square exactly once, if at move $n$, one must jump $a_n$ steps in one of the directions north,south,east or west, and mark ...
- 171
15
votes
0
answers
488
views
Does the Angel have to be really smart?
My question is about the computational complexity of the Angel's strategy in the Angels and Devils game, tl;dr does the Angel have a polynomial time strategy.
I'm a big Conway fan, so as you can ...
- 6,652
7
votes
3
answers
839
views
Decidability of the winning-position problem in an infinity chess with a finite number of short-range pieces only
Definitions
Long-range pieces: queens, rooks, bishops.
Short-range pieces: pawns, knights, kings.
We can extend the definition of short-range pieces to include also fairy pieces like: Berolina ...
- 1,107
7
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Is there a chess position equivalent to the Collatz conjecture?
Suppose we have an infinite board with a finite number of chess pieces. The question is whether white can checkmate black (without the after 50 moves it is a draw rule). Can you give an explicit ...
- 19.1k
4
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Probability theory and measuring the true strength of chessplayers
If you wanted to measure the strength of, say, a chess player, the best way would involve knowing the true value of each position: then you could compute the frequency $W$ with which the player finds ...
- 17.6k
2
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Strategy-stealing in chess
Is it proved that white can guarantee at least draw in chess?
A while ago I was told that it was proved using strategy-stealing, but I cannot find a reference.
Postscript. Please accept my apology ---...
- 45k
0
votes
1
answer
495
views
Infinite board games: sentences about
As a unified approach if we have an ( read any) infinite board game described as $\mathcal{G}$ using a particular axiom set A..
can a sentence be devised in A which automatically answers the basic ...
- 851
0
votes
1
answer
530
views
Is it possible to create an infinite sequence in which no subsequence is repeated 3 times in a row?
In Chess, there is the Threefold Repetition rule where if a sequence of moves is repeated 3 times in a row, either player can claim a draw.
Say two players wanted to play a legal, infinite game of ...
- 133