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Why not simply allow only white to castle? This forces white to attack and black to defend. If black survives and draws he deserves to be given a win!

M ANSARI wrote: ↑Fri Aug 23, 2019 8:17 am Why not simply allow only white to castle? This forces white to attack and black to defend. If black survives and draws he deserves to be given a win!

??? Perhaps you should take a look at the download or on my website... Level 2 is called NBC (=No Black Castling). White can castle in both directions and Black is not allowed to castle.

It's better to have white not being able to castle. To offset the first move advantage.

Nordlandia wrote: ↑Fri Aug 23, 2019 10:44 am It's better to have white not being able to castle. To offset the first move advantage.

You have really no idea, what Armageddon is all about, do you?

I forgot about that one

BS, the thread under which you posted is called ARMAGEDDON !

Having done some analysis, I'm now inclined to think that the best version is my second idea, which is midway between your level 1 SALC and level 2 NBC. I suppose you would call it NBSC. White is unrestricted in castling, Black can only castle long, not short. Since you got 45% for White with SALC and 55% for White with NBC (using 6pawnplies, the only set without obvious bias regarding castling), this should come out right around the ideal 50% for White. Logically, it doesn't make much sense to restrict White in any way if we are already making him the loser on draws, the restrictions should only be on Black. Lc0 shows the problem with Level 1 from the opening position, with SALC rules it considers best play to be the Albin Counter Gambit, 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 dxc4 !?. This capture is considered to be just a bad move in normal chess; after the queen trade White has a large advantage based on castling long. But if White cannot castle long, his advantage is reduced, and since Black's loss of castling doesn't hurt much with the no castling short rule, this becomes a very sensible defense to the queen's gambit. It doesn't feel right to me that there should be such cases where the rules make some defense better for Black than it would be in normal chess.

Is it complicated to teach Komodo armageddon mode. If this is something to invest time into. Armageddon involve riskier play, which in turn can be fun to watch.

Nordlandia wrote: ↑Fri Aug 23, 2019 9:05 pm Is it complicated to teach Komodo armageddon mode. If this is something to invest time into. Armageddon involve riskier play, which in turn can be fun to watch.

Simply setting Contempt to a high value for White should make Komodo play Armageddon pretty well. Of course we could do a lot better than that if Armageddon became all the rage, but we can't put it many hours of work on something that will only be used on rare occasions. I'm running some tests on my hybrid idea (NBSC) using shootout but with multiple versions of Lc0, Stockfish, Komodo, and Komodo MCTS to see how fair it is.

lkaufman wrote: ↑Fri Aug 23, 2019 9:37 pm

Nordlandia wrote: ↑Fri Aug 23, 2019 9:05 pm Is it complicated to teach Komodo armageddon mode. If this is something to invest time into. Armageddon involve riskier play, which in turn can be fun to watch.

Simply setting Contempt to a high value for White should make Komodo play Armageddon pretty well. Of course we could do a lot better than that if Armageddon became all the rage, but we can't put it many hours of work on something that will only be used on rare occasions. I'm running some tests on my hybrid idea (NBSC) using shootout but with multiple versions of Lc0, Stockfish, Komodo, and Komodo MCTS to see how fair it is.

Viewing draw as defeat is a fundemental change to the engine.