Hi, I'm currently watching a few games that I play all the way to checkmate
If it is possible, I have two simple questions.
1. What is the distribution of checkmate positions on the board?
1.1. in normal chess
1.2. in FRC chess
2. Are there any fields where checkmates have never occurred? Results from 1.
On which squares has the opposing king never been checkmated?
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Re: On which squares has the opposing king never been checkmated?
Hello:
I looked at a million games played on Lichess and counted how many times checkmate occurred on each square
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https% ... 300961.png
Which should answer your question 1.1. The short answer to the topic title is 'Nowhere': there have been checkmates in every square.
I expected more checkmates at the borders of the chessboard and less at the centre, which is exactly what results say. If we are going to trust this data:
This means that 'only' 264865 games out of the 1-million sample ended in checkmate (almost 26.5%). Computing percentages over 264865 and rounding up to 0.01%:
The high count of g1/g8 mating squares might be explained by a lot of checkmates with a queen at h2/h8 squares plus a bishop in that diagonal or a knight at g4/g5 squares, since there was not a minimum Elo thresold in the sample games and that sort of checkmate patterns, along with back-rank checkmates, are very common in low rated matches... all together knowing that castling kingside is far more played than castling queenside, probably around 90% of the time.
Any insights are welcome.
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The code source of the Python script that was used is available here:
[python] king's square at checkmate
So it should be possible to work out some data for FRC.
Regards from Spain.
Ajedrecista.
Someone wondered the same and collected some data over one million games borrowed from Lichess:chessica wrote: ↑Fri Nov 03, 2023 11:08 am Hi, I'm currently watching a few games that I play all the way to checkmate
If it is possible, I have two simple questions.
1. What is the distribution of checkmate positions on the board?
1.1. in normal chess
1.2. in FRC chess
2. Are there any fields where checkmates have never occurred? Results from 1.
I looked at a million games played on Lichess and counted how many times checkmate occurred on each square
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https% ... 300961.png
Which should answer your question 1.1. The short answer to the topic title is 'Nowhere': there have been checkmates in every square.
I expected more checkmates at the borders of the chessboard and less at the centre, which is exactly what results say. If we are going to trust this data:
Code: Select all
3653 4714 6654 5756 14753 10901 26745 17271 | 90447
1995 504 856 1526 2650 1647 2066 5990 | 17234
2847 787 1066 1427 1430 1890 1533 5607 | 16587
3084 671 862 839 1140 1587 1823 5538 | 15544
3011 676 859 848 1148 1716 1848 5629 | 15735
2620 688 842 1246 1394 1632 1539 5531 | 15492
1916 465 699 1150 1667 1211 1560 6016 | 14684
3458 4367 5860 4875 9066 9545 24937 17034 | 79142
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
22584 12872 17698 17667 33248 30129 62051 68616 | 264865
Code: Select all
1.38% 1.78% 2.51% 2.17% 5.57% 4.12% 10.10% 6.52% | 34.15%
0.75% 0.19% 0.32% 0.58% 1.00% 0.62% 0.78% 2.26% | 6.51%
1.07% 0.30% 0.40% 0.54% 0.54% 0.71% 0.58% 2.12% | 6.26%
1.16% 0.25% 0.33% 0.32% 0.43% 0.60% 0.69% 2.09% | 5.87%
1.14% 0.26% 0.32% 0.32% 0.43% 0.65% 0.70% 2.13% | 5.94%
0.99% 0.26% 0.32% 0.47% 0.53% 0.62% 0.58% 2.09% | 5.85%
0.72% 0.18% 0.26% 0.43% 0.63% 0.46% 0.59% 2.27% | 5.54%
1.31% 1.65% 2.21% 1.84% 3.42% 3.60% 9.41% 6.43% | 29.88%
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8.53% 4.86% 6.68% 6.67% 12.55% 11.38% 23.43% 25.91% | 100.00%
Any insights are welcome.
------------
The code source of the Python script that was used is available here:
[python] king's square at checkmate
So it should be possible to work out some data for FRC.
Regards from Spain.
Ajedrecista.
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- Posts: 967
- Joined: Thu Aug 11, 2022 11:30 pm
- Full name: Esmeralda Pinto
Re: On which squares has the opposing king never been checkmated?
Many thanks
, the best place for the king is b2. It will be never mate.
