Show HN: Blunderchess.net – blunder for your opponent every five moves

[eviledamame]

blunderchess.net is an open source, peer-to-peer chess app where every five moves, players each get to make one blunder-move for their opponent

[Townley]

My teenage niece is getting solid at chess, but I can still beat her handily. So we came up with a fun handicap the last few times we’ve played:

Every third turn, my four year old daughter gets to move for me. She doesn’t know the rules so she chooses a piece and we give her the full rundown of options where that piece can legally move. Neither of us can influence her choice, but there’s some degree of psychological play allowed for everyone’s entertainment

It’s been unexpectedly rich and fun for everyone involved:

- My daughter is slowly learning the game and likes hamming up the choice

- I exercise a different part of my brain around guarding eventualities and conservative movements

- Pure cackles of joy and glee from my niece whenever my daughter reaches for the queen

[ryannevius]

This reminds me a bit of Hand and Brain [1], another fun variant with kids. We usually switch to normal chess after a predetermined number of moves.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_and_brain

[bpev]

tfw "defensive play" is actually just blocking your own pieces on purpose

[eviledamame]

I love that! A very similar situation was also the inspiration for this variant- a beginner friend and I wanted to play but make the game less serious and more funny

[dsjoerg]

Has anyone worked out good strategy for this variant? At first think, I'd think Player 2 has an advantage because they are the first player who is able to make a move for their opponent and then _immediately_ play a move for themselves that exploits it.

And, I suppose there might be some strategy where it's important not to expose yourself to potential shenanigans of this kind.

So I'm wondering how this game looks for skilled players of both sides -- is it balanced, are the strategies interesting, etc. Or are we trying to work that out right now?

Were these rulesets chosen carefully among many options because they result in the most interesting games? Or is this just a YOLO?

[eviledamame]

My observations so far is that this game mode causes a lot of draws- because when a player gets a "power play" (moving opponent's piece, then immediately own piece) they can nullify pretty much any attack. It does seem like restricting mobility to your important pieces like the queen and rooks can be advantageous- to prevent your opponent from taking them on a "power play"

As for the turn order- it generally needs to be "odd number of consecutive normal moves" followed by two "blunder for opponent moves". I have it set at five consecutive normal moves right now. Initially, I tried three, but that was too frustrating. Your opponent had too much control over your board. I could be convinced that seven normal consecutive moves is better than five though. Beyond that, I would think that the gimmick (playing for opponent) would occur too rarely. I'm not sure though! I'm curious what others think

[elif]

The cow is probably meta opening NGL it's all about hiding your power behind pawns

[CSMastermind]

I've had a lot of success bringing a knight out first and playing a generally defensive game.

[thijsvandien]

I once had the idea to take this to the extreme and make a version where you only control your opponent's pieces, so in terms of this game: blunder after blunder. Hardly having any chess experience, I'm not sure how interesting it would be. There's a good chance it essentially turns the one to start into the winner. Every few moves like here might work a lot better.

[jlund-molfese]

Sounds like a similar idea to antichess. Antichess is also (sadly) a solved game assuming perfect play.

[Waterluvian]

I love this concept of taking a game, making one rule change, and suddenly the game has a whole new feeling to it.

This may be old news for some but I just discovered this rule that makes tic tac toe incredibly fun to play with my kids: only the last three moves of each player stay on the board.

[throwup238]

I’ve heard that one of the ways to writing good science fiction is to take the world as it is now, and imagine what would happen if you changed just one thing. This feels like a good rule in general to iterate on things in the real world that have been known to work or be fun, etc.

[sockbot]

You might be interested in 960 chess a.k.a Fischer random a.k.a. freestyle chess. There is a weekly tournament on Fridays at chess.com if you want an intro.

[thepuppet33r]

The font is hard to read. From a usability and accessibility standpoint, I'd recommend changing it.

[sudoshred]

Agree, though it seems that the font choice is so bad it must be intentional.

[vlovich123]

Tried the local version and the only blunder given was to White after move 5 & the rest of the game played out normally. Some blunders in the code perhaps?

[eviledamame]

The tricky thing about playing locally is that white and black will always alternate- so if you're not paying close attention to the turn order at the bottom, it appears as if it is playing out as normal chess. However the turn order is five normal moves, followed by two blunder-for-opponent moves, repeating

[moomin]

Penultimate Chess is interesting: you propose two moves, your opponent picks which one happens.

[pmcarlton]

This is very interesting! I recommend that you add a visual indicator of where you currently are in the normal/blunder cycle, and whose turn it will be when.

[eviledamame]

the turn order is shown at the bottom. although i do think it could be improved. adding additional highlighting around "power plays" (moving opponents piece, then immediately own piece) could be helpful

[elif]

Accepted someone's challenge then they gave up after turn 5.

This has the age old probably in online chess of people abandoning games and even accounts to preserve their ego

[TZubiri]

Author may be able to adapt stockfish to play this variant

[eviledamame]

Very true!

[jrockway]

I don't need any help making chess blunders!

[maxmcd]

There seem to be errors connecting to peers

[tyre]

the real blunder was the networks we relied on along the way

[pbh101]

Not seeing any players online.

[jmclnx]

may take time for people to see this

[jpat]

Nor am I

[eviledamame]

there were indeed some networking issues which should now be resolved :)

[aqueueaqueue]

gg "Linda"

[billsunshine]

let's play