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Los Alamos variant. Chess on a 6 by 6 board from the early days of computing. (6x6, Cells: 36) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Anonymous wrote on Thu, Jun 27, 2002 01:29 PM EDT:Excellent ★★★★★

I really enjoyed reading about Los Alamos Chess! I think that it is great for you to show a pirture of the board. All of the other Chess variants are also very interesting to read about. It is fun to learn that there are other ways of playing chess! I'm glad you wrote about Los Alamos Chess because it was very informative and was easy to understand.

Sam wrote on Thu, Jun 27, 2002 07:37 PM EDT:

The site is to short. Give more information about this. Also I have read some were before that the knight's movement was changed in ordor to fit the board. They did that because on a regular chess board the knight can land on every spot on the board with out going to the same spot twice. That is why they changed it. Please look into it more and make sure your facts are more complete. Thank you.

Anonymous wrote on Thu, Jun 27, 2002 07:58 PM EDT:

Knight's tour is possible on 6x6 refer to
http://home.earthlink.net/~tfiller/bts.htm

Anonymous wrote on Tue, Nov 21, 2000 07:00 PM EST:Excellent ★★★★★

Excellent short and sweet.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Apr 27, 2003 06:34 AM EDT:Good ★★★★

I am curious to know why Chess without Bishops was easier to deal with. Was there a difficulty with the concept of colourbinding, such as wasting computing time on considering positions that could not arise?

Eric Burgess wrote on Sat, Jul 19, 2003 10:51 AM EDT:Good ★★★★

I would guess the difficulty wasn't with the bishops themselves. Rooks or Knights probably could equally well have been omitted. Reducing the number of pieces (at the outset) by 8, and the number of board squares by 28, drastically reduces the number of legal moves from any position, which in turn reduces the computing power needed to look ahead by a given number of moves.

Glenn Overby II wrote on Mon, Jul 21, 2003 08:21 PM EDT:

I second Eric's comment.  At the time Los Alamos chess was invented,
computing power was at a premium.  :)  A 16 2/3% reduction in piece types
to factor in, a 25% reduction in pieces on the board, a 40+% reduction in
number of places to move...taken together, that's a huge savings. 
Combine this with the likelihood that the early algorithms were nothing
more than brute force calculations...

John Lawson wrote on Tue, Jul 22, 2003 01:14 AM EDT:

'At the time Los Alamos chess was invented, computing power was at a
premium.'

I did some quick research, and came up with these facts about the MANIAC,
on which this variant was played.

Memory - 1 k
Storage - 80 k
I/O - paper tape
Time to multiply two numbers - 1 sec.
Contained 2,400 vacuum tubes

In those days there were no compilers, programmers wrote directly in
machine code.  I think they deserve a LOT of credit.

Charles Gilman wrote on Fri, Oct 22, 2004 03:29 AM EDT:

Well whatever the reason for dropping the Bishops in particular, it is appropriate for an American location with a Spanish name. In Spanish the Bishop is called Alfil, a link to to its elephantine roots, and presumably elephants have never been used in warfare in the Americas.

Filip Rachunek wrote on Sat, Oct 1, 2005 04:49 AM EDT:Excellent ★★★★★

This game can be played on BrainKing.

Anonymous wrote on Mon, Jun 28, 2010 11:02 AM EDT:

Can pawns be promoted to bishops?

Charles Gilman wrote on Wed, Jun 30, 2010 02:34 AM EDT:

Presumably not, as programming for a piece with a Bishop move but no Rook one would cut into the saving in complexity.

exdeath wrote on Mon, Mar 5, 2012 10:31 AM EST:

One question, los alamos has the Threefold repetition, The fifty-move rule and Impossibility of checkmate rules?

Rodrigo Zanotelli wrote on Tue, Apr 3, 2012 06:13 PM EDT:

Why king and queen are flipped in los alamos chess, there are any reason to that?

Joe Joyce wrote on Tue, Apr 3, 2012 06:44 PM EDT:

The board is too small to use the common set-up rules: 'white is right' and 'queen on color'. This arrangement is closest-looking to standard chess. If you put the queens on their own colors, the kings and queens reverse positions, or the right corner square becomes black. Quite literally, this is the best-looking choice, the most normal and comfortable to chess players.

Kevin Pacey wrote on Thu, Mar 1, 2018 03:35 AM EST:Excellent ★★★★★

It's surprising how much action can be squeezed in on such a small board variant.

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