Breakthrough draughts

[TAILLE]

In 2003 we already played an experimental tournament with this rule, but with one difference: after a breakthrough the game continues, and the player with the king only wins when he survives. To put it in other words: a regular game is played and only when there is no winner, the victory goes to the player who first got a king. In this way draws are also impossible but the game stands much closer to draughts as we know it.
I think it also is more of a challenge for programmers. The breakthrough draughts of Gérard merely seems a matter of brute force, since games won't last long.

Yes the breakthrough draughts as I defined it eliminates all plays with kings. Is is a major change; I agree that the game will last not so long but surely it becomes very complicated. I quite understand your proposal but the result of the game may appear quite unfair in common situations.


White to play

According to your rule white is winning but that looks not logical because it seems that black managed to build a clear advantage so that white has to give up two men in order to reach the king row.
Why not reversing the rule : the winner is the side who obtains the last king.
With this new rule it seems to me that all endgames with 1K+2M against 1K is winning for the side with a material advantage.
In the example above, and supposing the black piece on 43 is already a king, black wins simply by reaching the position

and now black gives the two pieces 9 and 13 in order to win by 36-41.

I know that is a pity that white wins in the following diagram

white to play

But this sitation seems very exceptional and the probability is very high that black could have won by delaying one of its promotion.

[Rein Halbersma]

In 2003 we already played an experimental tournament with this rule, but with one difference: after a breakthrough the game continues, and the player with the king only wins when he survives. To put it in other words: a regular game is played and only when there is no winner, the victory goes to the player who first got a king. In this way draws are also impossible but the game stands much closer to draughts as we know it.
I think it also is more of a challenge for programmers. The breakthrough draughts of Gérard merely seems a matter of brute force, since games won't last long.

Yes the breakthrough draughts as I defined it eliminates all plays with kings. Is is a major change; I agree that the game will last not so long but surely it becomes very complicated. I quite understand your proposal but the result of the game may appear quite unfair in common situations.


White to play

According to your rule white is winning but that looks not logical because it seems that black managed to build a clear advantage so that white has to give up two men in order to reach the king row.
Why not reversing the rule : the winner is the side who obtains the last king.
With this new rule it seems to me that all endgames with 1K+2M against 1K is winning for the side with a material advantage.
In the example above, black wins simply by reaching the position

and now black gives the two pieces 9 and 13 in order to win by 36-41.

I know that is a pity that white wins in the following diagram

white to play

But this sitation seems very exceptional and the probability is very high that black could have won by delaying one of its promotion.

Small tweak to your proposal: win =
opponent is out of moves (=current rules) ELSE
(first to get 1 king AND opponent gets at most 1 king) ELSE
(first to get 2 kings AND opponent gets at most 2 kings) ELSE
...

This similar to the rules in eg high jump in athletics: highest distance wins, then least attempts. Here: most kings wins, then quickest to get the equal number of kings.

So eg 1K+2M vs 1K should usually win for majority, unless minority gets first king and can block majority from getting 2nd king, but this should be rare.

The advantage here is that equal games where one side is ahead in tempi and gets first king wins the game as long as he manages to prevent his opponent from getting 2nd king first. This keeps the race character of the regular game of trying to get a king as quickly as possible. It is easy to keep track of as well, since piece identity is irrelevant.

[Rein Halbersma]

Hi,

Do you know the "breakthrough" draughts variant (I do not know if this is the correct wording)? You take the standard rules of the international draughts game but you decide that the first side with a king wins the game. With this rule the game becomes extremely difficult because you can see that the draw does not exist.

For your information Damy has solved this game for a 8x8 board.
In the intitial position the move 22-18!! is the only winning move; the seven other moves are losing moves.

Position after 22-18!!

We knew this already from your excellent contributions on the Computer sub forum here, but congratulations on your result! Please consider writing an article about it for the ICGA journal.

[TAILLE]

White to play

Small tweak to your proposal: win =
opponent is out of moves (=current rules) ELSE
(first to get 1 king AND opponent gets at most 1 king) ELSE
(first to get 2 kings AND opponent gets at most 2 kings) ELSE
...

So eg 1K+2M vs 1K should usually win for majority, unless minority gets first king and can block majority from getting 2nd king, but this should be rare.

The advantage here is that equal games where one side is ahead in tempi and gets first king wins the game as long as he manages to prevent his opponent from getting 2nd king first. This keeps the race character of the regular game of trying to get a king as quickly as possible. It is easy to keep track of as well, since piece identity is irrelevant.

If I understand correctly the above position is winning for white (which is what I would like to avoid) isn't it?

[Rein Halbersma]

White to play

Small tweak to your proposal: win =
opponent is out of moves (=current rules) ELSE
(first to get 1 king AND opponent gets at most 1 king) ELSE
(first to get 2 kings AND opponent gets at most 2 kings) ELSE
...

So eg 1K+2M vs 1K should usually win for majority, unless minority gets first king and can block majority from getting 2nd king, but this should be rare.

The advantage here is that equal games where one side is ahead in tempi and gets first king wins the game as long as he manages to prevent his opponent from getting 2nd king first. This keeps the race character of the regular game of trying to get a king as quickly as possible. It is easy to keep track of as well, since piece identity is irrelevant.

If I understand correctly the above position is winning for white (which is what I would like to avoid) isn't it?

Correct, but this should be rare case. Black would have tried to get another piece across the main diagonal before getting first king.

[ildjarn]

White to play

Small tweak to your proposal: win =
opponent is out of moves (=current rules) ELSE
(first to get 1 king AND opponent gets at most 1 king) ELSE
(first to get 2 kings AND opponent gets at most 2 kings) ELSE
...

So eg 1K+2M vs 1K should usually win for majority, unless minority gets first king and can block majority from getting 2nd king, but this should be rare.

The advantage here is that equal games where one side is ahead in tempi and gets first king wins the game as long as he manages to prevent his opponent from getting 2nd king first. This keeps the race character of the regular game of trying to get a king as quickly as possible. It is easy to keep track of as well, since piece identity is irrelevant.

If I understand correctly the above position is winning for white (which is what I would like to avoid) isn't it?

Depends on your definition of 'gets as most 2 kings'. In the case of 1 king on main diagonal vs two pieces behind diagonal and one king, if black sacrifices one piece and one king, and promotes his last piece, does this count as 'getting 2 kings'?

[TAILLE]

In this brainstorming I would like to propose another solution.
The side with a material advantage wins the game (we have to define the value of king) and, in case of equality, the side which obtains the first king wins.
May be I have some doubt when a side obtains a king but this king is captured some move later before reappearing in the endgame.

[Rein Halbersma]

White to play

Small tweak to your proposal: win =
opponent is out of moves (=current rules) ELSE
(first to get 1 king AND opponent gets at most 1 king) ELSE
(first to get 2 kings AND opponent gets at most 2 kings) ELSE
...

So eg 1K+2M vs 1K should usually win for majority, unless minority gets first king and can block majority from getting 2nd king, but this should be rare.

The advantage here is that equal games where one side is ahead in tempi and gets first king wins the game as long as he manages to prevent his opponent from getting 2nd king first. This keeps the race character of the regular game of trying to get a king as quickly as possible. It is easy to keep track of as well, since piece identity is irrelevant.

If I understand correctly the above position is winning for white (which is what I would like to avoid) isn't it?

Depends on your definition of 'gets as most 2 kings'. In the case of 1 king on main diagonal vs two pieces behind diagonal and one king, if black sacrifices one piece and one king, and promotes his last piece, does this count as 'getting 2 kings'?

I would only count the final material on the board. If you lose eg 2 of 3 kings, and your opponent got his first king before you, you lose.

[Casper van der Tak]

There are many different versions possible. In my example, you would need to keep track of the order in which kings were obtained; you could do this with numbers but not necessarily elegant. Another alternative could be to say that the first to king that survives for at least two non-hitting moves wins in case according to traditional rules it is a draw.

I believe it makes sense to run experimental tournaments with a number of rulesets to see what works best in practice, considering a variety of criteria.

[Rein Halbersma]

There are many different versions possible. In my example, you would need to keep track of the order in which kings were obtained; you could do this with numbers but not necessarily elegant. Another alternative could be to say that the first to king that survives for at least two non-hitting moves wins in case according to traditional rules it is a draw.

I believe it makes sense to run experimental tournaments with a number of rulesets to see what works best in practice, considering a variety of criteria.

Agreed. IMO, any break-through game should at least respect regular wins. Any tie-breaker rule awarding a win to first or last N-th king can be fine-tuned by the kind of experiments you allude to.

The games most interesting to me are Killer (or Yuri Anikeev's Killer-light) and if even those games give too many draws: Frisian draughts! That is 5% draws at the top-level

[TAILLE]

There are many different versions possible. In my example, you would need to keep track of the order in which kings were obtained; you could do this with numbers but not necessarily elegant. Another alternative could be to say that the first to king that survives for at least two non-hitting moves wins in case according to traditional rules it is a draw.

I believe it makes sense to run experimental tournaments with a number of rulesets to see what works best in practice, considering a variety of criteria.

We all see the advantages of the breakthrough draughts : no draw are possible and the game becomes very complicated because the feeling is that a tiny mistake could very easily change a win in a loss. This last point is interesting in order to change the image of children game comparing to chess game for example.
Now what about continuing the game after the first king? Here we have to remember why we are looking for a change of the rule. The only reason is to avoid seeing a great majority of drawing games between high top level players. It has to be very clear that in all other situations the current international draughts rules are fine and we certainly do not to want to change them.
As a consequence let’s concentrate our attention only on high top players. The point for those players is that they can (almost always) avoid any losing move (that’s why we would like to change the rule). In this context a top player is always able to detect that the game is still a draw after a promotion. In other word a high top player is able to avoid a promotion if the resulting position leads to a loss. If all this is true I certainly do not want to continue the game after the first promotion for an obvious reason : in the great majority of the cases it will be effectively a draw and this phase of the game will be very boring due to the fact that one player will play for the draw while the other will wait for a very improbable mistake.
My only concern with the pure breakthrough draughts game is that I lose some beautiful combinations based on kings. In order to keep a majority of this combinations in the game I proposed the following rule: the game is a win if the side to move has a king and is not in a capture position. Note also that some new combinations will also appear because now we can look for a promotion even at the cost of a losing game (for the international draughts game).
I am of course very interesting by experimentations!

[TAILLE]

Hi,

Do you know the "breakthrough" draughts variant (I do not know if this is the correct wording)? You take the standard rules of the international draughts game but you decide that the first side with a king wins the game. With this rule the game becomes extremely difficult because you can see that the draw does not exist.

For your information Damy has solved this game for a 8x8 board.
In the intitial position the move 22-18!! is the only winning move; the seven other moves are losing moves.

Position after 22-18!!

We knew this already from your excellent contributions on the Computer sub forum here, but congratulations on your result! Please consider writing an article about it for the ICGA journal.

Concerning an article for the ICGA my situation is not so easy.
Rain, as you perfectly know, Bert Tuyt was the first guy that study 8x8 breakthrough draughts and he was also the first guy that claimed that 22-18 was a winning move in the initial position. What I brought later is the building of the 16 pieces egdb which allowed to prove that 22-18! was the only winning move. That way we can claim that the initial position is completely solved.
For an article it is obvious for me that it could not be written without a Bert Tuyt contribution!

BTW I correct a small mistake : 22-18! is the only winning move and the six (!) other moves are losing moves

[Jan Pieter]

In 2003 we already played an experimental tournament with this rule, but with one difference: after a breakthrough the game continues, and the player with the king only wins when he survives. To put it in other words: a regular game is played and only when there is no winner, the victory goes to the player who first got a king. In this way draws are also impossible but the game stands much closer to draughts as we know it.
I think it also is more of a challenge for programmers. The breakthrough draughts of Gérard merely seems a matter of brute force, since games won't last long.

Yes the breakthrough draughts as I defined it eliminates all plays with kings. Is is a major change; I agree that the game will last not so long but surely it becomes very complicated. I quite understand your proposal but the result of the game may appear quite unfair in common situations.

It all depends on what you are looking for. Do you want a game that is fair and that is a nice challenge for programmers? In that case I don't have much to add to the discussion. But if you are looking for a game that might become popular with current draughts players, I think you'd better keep two things in mind:

1) all current wins should be respected
2) end games should not last (much) longer than current end games

Breakthrough draughts clearly conflits with thought number 1 and your suggestion of 'the last king' conflicts with thought number 2. That suggestion will lead to 'eternal' end games since both sides will postpone promotion as long as possible. The same goes for the tweak of Rein: that also leads to very long end games.

[Jaap van Galen]

In this brainstorming I would like to propose another solution.
The side with a material advantage wins the game (we have to define the value of king) and, in case of equality, the side which obtains the first king wins.

Thank you for your brainstorming!

[Rein Halbersma]

Hi,

Do you know the "breakthrough" draughts variant (I do not know if this is the correct wording)? You take the standard rules of the international draughts game but you decide that the first side with a king wins the game. With this rule the game becomes extremely difficult because you can see that the draw does not exist.

For your information Damy has solved this game for a 8x8 board.
In the intitial position the move 22-18!! is the only winning move; the seven other moves are losing moves.

Position after 22-18!!

We knew this already from your excellent contributions on the Computer sub forum here, but congratulations on your result! Please consider writing an article about it for the ICGA journal.

Concerning an article for the ICGA my situation is not so easy.
Rain, as you perfectly know, Bert Tuyt was the first guy that study 8x8 breakthrough draughts and he was also the first guy that claimed that 22-18 was a winning move in the initial position. What I brought later is the building of the 16 pieces egdb which allowed to prove that 22-18! was the only winning move. That way we can claim that the initial position is completely solved.
For an article it is obvious for me that it could not be written without a Bert Tuyt contribution!

BTW I correct a small mistake : 22-18! is the only winning move and the six (!) other moves are losing moves

Thanks for setting the record straight, Bert indeed deserves credit and I am looking forward to your joint article!