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Computer chess and the N900
My first chess computer
Years ago, when I was thoroughly fascinated by chess, I always wanted a portable chess computer. When I finally got one (a Novag Piccolo, for the odd chance someone else had the same device) I'd take it with me whenever possible. It got worn out quickly, moving the small plastic figures required more and more pressure to make the computer acknowledge my moves. For each move you first had to "touch" the figure you wanted to move. The computer would beep and show 2 LEDs (one for each row and line), for a lack of better feedback. Then you'd put the figure to its target location and "touch" it again, with the same feedback procedure for a valid move. If the move wasn't valid the error LED was lit. Perhaps this wasn't the best user interface in the world (I yearned for a self-moving Mephisto Phantom which actually was a Fidelity Phantom), but it worked for me and I was happy.
The problem with computer chess
The downside came when I realized there was a set of moves for each difficulty level that would always win. Later when Deep Blue won vs Garry Kasparov I lost interest in computer chess, because it seemed you could either have an imperfect machine that was boring to play (a certain set of moves would always win), or a nearly perfect machine that would bruteforce its way to victory. At least that's how the future looked to me in 1996.
Could computer chess ever be fun again?
With the N900 device lease programme from the Maemo Summit I think I finally got my very own special version of a Mephisto Phantom: The chess app that is installed by default moves "by itself" (duh ...), and with Hildon's finger touch paradigm I have a similar "board feeling" as with my old Novag Piccolo. And damn - this N900 surely is portable!
How to make it less fun
Now you would think that with an ARM Cortex-A8 it should be possible to play challenging but also fun games. But here comes the frustration again: gnuchess - the chess engine being used - comes without the opening book. Of course there might be valid reasons to not include the opening book/end game database:
- space consumption on the device (though the default opening book is pretty small),
- gnuchess is good enough to beat most players into submission
- a chess app should be more than an "opening book replay engine"
Only that chess engines are still too dumb to come up with meaningful opening moves on their own. Worse yet, gnuchess wasn't configured to randomize the outcome of its evaluation function. Which means: this device is still susceptible to the same strategy I used vs. my first chess computer nearly two decades ago!
Conclusion
The solution could of course be easy: Include the opening book and let gnuchess pick the worst move (even better: choose one randomly) from the lookup tables on easier difficulty levels, or limit how many moves into the game it is allowed to play "by the book". Also introduce random noise to force gnuchess into mistakes that are exploitable for casual players.
I will continue to play chess games with the N900. Let's try to improve the chess app though!
