About 90% of Chess Engines Can Play Shuffle Chess

[swami]

Shuffle chess is almost similar to FRC, the only difference is the castling.

No opening books.

I estimate about 90% of normal chess engines can play Shuffle chess in Arena.

No need for any kind of special implementation.

Only 2-5% of chess engines play FRC.

I don't quite understand how FRC, Gothic chess, or even 10x8 chess variants get more popularity in computer chess than shuffle chess...Actual tests have been done in FRC, Gothic chess and 10x8 chess... but I see almost no results in shuffle chess? It makes sense to test engines in shuffle chess instead of hoping that FRC would progress in future waiting for many engines to have added FRC implementation? No?

[Spock]

Yes, it is odd that shuffle chess isn't at least as popular as FRC (chess960). Perhaps the Fischer name had something to do with it. I didn't even know shuffle chess existed until fairly recently. And as you say, I suspect far more engines support it than FRC.

I think opening books have destroyed normal chess. I see computer chess tournaments where the first 20 moves or more are made from a book, prepared by a human. Only after that point does the engine take over. How on earth that can be called computer chess I don't know. I think it is outrageous. Far better that opening books are limited to 8 moves or less, and let's see more of the COMPUTER in computer chess. I know it won't happen, which is why I'm a big supporter of FRC - the engines do the work right from the first move. If David Levy really wanted to do something useful for WCCC, he would impose a book moves limit instead of an ill-conceived hardware limit.

[hgm]

WinBoard supports the (shuffle) variants nocastle and wildcastle, which are shuffle variants of normal chess and thus can be played by any engine that support variant normal.

In fact WinBoard is able to play any variant as a shuffle variant. Just select the variant, and then use the "File -> New Shuffle Game..." menu. Then you can play shuffled Crazyhouse, Shuffled Shatranj, Shuffled Capablanca, Shuffled Courier, Shuffled Knightmate. All with the normal engines for this game.

Depending on the shuffle option you set, you can get a new shuffle on every game, or fix a random shuffle, or ask for a fixed shuffle with a particular number.

[michiguel]

Shuffle chess is almost similar to FRC, the only difference is the castling.

No opening books.

I estimate about 90% of normal chess engines can play Shuffle chess in Arena.

No need for any kind of special implementation.

Only 2-5% of chess engines play FRC.

I don't quite understand how FRC, Gothic chess, or even 10x8 chess variants get more popularity in computer chess than shuffle chess...Actual tests have been done in FRC, Gothic chess and 10x8 chess... but I see almost no results in shuffle chess? It makes sense to test engines in shuffle chess instead of hoping that FRC would progress in future waiting for many engines to have added FRC implementation? No?

What is the difference between both? I know that FRC shuffle the pieces at the beginning. What do you mean differences with castling? Can you still castle in FRC? How?
Sorry about my ignorance...

If the only thing is needed is to provide an original FEN with a specific pseudo legal position, Gaviota would play following normal rules of chess. Is that shuffle chess?

Miguel

[Spock]

The castling rules in chess960 are slightly strange. Some engine authors have also had difficulty with them at the beginning, I've encountered lots and lots of castling bugs with FRC engines until the authors get it right.

And then there are the two different conventions for FRC FEN - Shredder FEN (UCI Shredder GUI) and XFEN (Arena, Winboard?) Fortunately ChessGUI supports both, and is the logical choice for FRC engine vs engine matches.

[michiguel]

The castling rules in chess960 are slightly strange. Some engine authors have also had difficulty with them at the beginning, I've encountered lots and lots of castling bugs with FRC engines until the authors get it right.

Slightly?
I just checked wikipedia. My goodness, this is the last nail in the coffin to prove Fischer's insanity. It is difficult to me to understand how it is possible to love a game so much and they you try to destroy it with this Frankenstein. RJF wanted to play different positions to minimize opening study? fine, what is wrong with shuffle chess then?
When your ego is bigger than the love for your discipline, this is what happens.

Miguel

And then there are the two different conventions for FRC FEN - Shredder FEN (UCI Shredder GUI) and XFEN (Arena, Winboard?) Fortunately ChessGUI supports both, and is the logical choice for FRC engine vs engine matches.

[swami]

Yes, it is odd that shuffle chess isn't at least as popular as FRC (chess960). Perhaps the Fischer name had something to do with it. I didn't even know shuffle chess existed until fairly recently. And as you say, I suspect far more engines support it than FRC.

I think opening books have destroyed normal chess. I see computer chess tournaments where the first 20 moves or more are made from a book, prepared by a human. Only after that point does the engine take over. How on earth that can be called computer chess I don't know. I think it is outrageous. Far better that opening books are limited to 8 moves or less, and let's see more of the COMPUTER in computer chess. I know it won't happen, which is why I'm a big supporter of FRC - the engines do the work right from the first move. If David Levy really wanted to do something useful for WCCC, he would impose a book moves limit instead of an ill-conceived hardware limit.

Yeah I'd like to have seen engine making moves from the beginning.

In normal chess without opening books, 2 Engines play first game. When they are both without learning. They repeat the same moves again in the 2nd game and so on.
This is not the case in Shuffle chess. Since in the 2nd game, both the engines get random position which is ofcourse different to what it was in the first game.

As you say opening books take up nearly 20 moves from the game for the engines. On Average, engine games end in 50-70 moves. Opening + Bitbases does 35 moves work for the engine.

In shuffle chess, one could use the bitbases (though not all engines support bitbases), rest of the game is played purely by the engine. No moves are wasted with the opening book. We would know the real engine strength.

We have seen that many engines without opening book make a lot of "waste of time" moves or tempos or do not actively or properly develop their pieces.

Engines with near good understanding of activating pieces and right way of development can prove that in shuffle chess.

So Shuffle chess ought to be as popular as normal chess, sometimes even better for those who hate opening books interfering with the engine in games.

[swami]

If the only thing is needed is to provide an original FEN with a specific pseudo legal position, Gaviota would play following normal rules of chess. Is that shuffle chess?

Miguel

Yeah, Arena does that automatically. It generates shuffled positions from the beginning.

Gaviota can play shuffle chess, if it manages to avoid getting checks from the opponent...in Arena. (I know it's GUI's fault...)

[hgm]

And then there are the two different conventions for FRC FEN - Shredder FEN (UCI Shredder GUI) and XFEN (Arena, Winboard?) Fortunately ChessGUI supports both, and is the logical choice for FRC engine vs engine matches.

WinBoard uses Shredder FEN and understand both Shredder FEN and XFEN.

Arena does neither support Shredder FEN nor XFEN, only normal FEN.

[IWB]

Hallo,

The castling rules in chess960 are slightly strange. Some engine authors have also had difficulty with them at the beginning, I've encountered lots and lots of castling bugs with FRC engines until the authors get it right.

Slightly?
I just checked wikipedia. My goodness, this is the last nail in the coffin to prove Fischer's insanity. ...

It is slightly differnt, the problem is the written definition. It is much easier to understand when you know that after 0-0 or 0-0-0 the King and the Rook are at the same positions as in normal chess. ONE exception to normal chess - the King is allowed to pass the position where the Rook was before. Thats it and it is not too difficult to remember 2 easy rules. (If you are not too strict you can even forget about the second one and simply play normal chess ...)

One more thing regarding 960FEN, the Chessbase GUI supports also the Shredder FEN!

Bye
Ingo

PS: There is a 960 Engine room in Playchess. It is a bit hidden in "Thematic chess" but there are quite a few engines which can play there. To name a few:

Shredder, Fritz 960, Rybka 960, Naum FRC, Deep Sjeng, Bright (special version), Glaurung ...
Unfortunately Stockfish crashes after a castling, while Glaurung can play there!?

If you want to run an engine there you have to add in the *.uci file of the engine this extra lines:

[OPTIONS]
UCI_Chess960=true
if it not already exist.