Winner Announced In the World's First 'Quantum Chess' Tournament (arstechnica.com) 25
Aleksander Kubica is a postdoctoral fellow at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and Institute for Quantum Computing. And he's also the winner of the world's first quantum chess tournament. (It's now available for streaming on Twitch, and begins with a clip of the late Stephen Hawking playing a 2016 game against Ant-Man star Paul Rudd.)
"It's a complicated version of regular chess that incorporates the quantum concepts of superposition, entanglement, and interference," explains Ars Technica (in an article shared by John Trumpian): In quantum chess, there are multiple boards on which the pieces exist, and their number is not fixed. Players can perform "quantum moves" as well as regular chess moves; players just need to indicate which type of move they're performing. Any quantum move will create a superposition of boards (doubling the number of possible boards in the superposition with each quantum move), although the player will see a single board representing all boards at the same time. And any individual move acts on all boards at the same time.
Pawns move the same as in regular chess, but other pieces can make either standard moves or quantum moves, such that they can occupy more than one square simultaneously. In a 2016 blog post, Chris Cantwell of Quantum Realm Games offered the example of a white queen performing a quantum move from D1 to D3. "We get two possible boards. On one board the queen did not move at all. On the other, the queen did move. Each board has a 50 percent chance of 'existence'..."
In 2016 Stephen Hawking had played a game of quantum chess against Paul Rudd in a video which also featured both Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, stars of the "Bill and Ted" movies.
"It's a complicated version of regular chess that incorporates the quantum concepts of superposition, entanglement, and interference," explains Ars Technica (in an article shared by John Trumpian): In quantum chess, there are multiple boards on which the pieces exist, and their number is not fixed. Players can perform "quantum moves" as well as regular chess moves; players just need to indicate which type of move they're performing. Any quantum move will create a superposition of boards (doubling the number of possible boards in the superposition with each quantum move), although the player will see a single board representing all boards at the same time. And any individual move acts on all boards at the same time.
Pawns move the same as in regular chess, but other pieces can make either standard moves or quantum moves, such that they can occupy more than one square simultaneously. In a 2016 blog post, Chris Cantwell of Quantum Realm Games offered the example of a white queen performing a quantum move from D1 to D3. "We get two possible boards. On one board the queen did not move at all. On the other, the queen did move. Each board has a 50 percent chance of 'existence'..."
In 2016 Stephen Hawking had played a game of quantum chess against Paul Rudd in a video which also featured both Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, stars of the "Bill and Ted" movies.
I'm sure it was a super position though (Score:5, Funny)
Now that the winner's been announced, though, it's impossible to know what the winning move was.
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The only winning move is not to play...
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I'm uncertain... (Score:2)
Can they announce the winner without changing who it was?
Re: I'm uncertain... (Score:2)
No, you just have to go back in time and nuke Kppenhagen. ;)
Kopenhagen interpretation? Lame! (Score:2)
I at least expected it to be the many-worlds interpretation!
Especially with people like Hawking starting it.
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Player B: "I won in another universe!"
Ref: "Good, go there to pick up your prize."
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-I wonder if between each move they asked for more funding?
Closer to the day of playing Azad (Score:1)
Winnings (Score:1)
They pay you in quantum money: it doesn't exist until you overdraw.
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Correction: overdraft
Schrodinger's pet nervous (Score:1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Missing ruleset explaination (Score:3)
Although I could tell the rules from looking at the stream's game, it doesn't feel complete. At the very least, add an FAQ.
They mentioned something about the infinite king split, and that it's countered because of a finite amount of floating point representation. That's technically a short-term solution, because it's feasible to just write a superior bignum library where such a split could keep going on forever. It's better to just hard cap it (such as 1/64) to a specific limitation rather than an arbitrary value limit.
Measurement - that feels like it could counter infinite king sprawl, provided one can capture multiple pieces at once. The way it's described - there's a chance a split piece can't capture, resulting in a 50% of cascading disaster (because the player passed instead.)
I think the Kriegspiel [wikipedia.org] might be better to visualise. In that version, there's a "one true board" position, and while the player knows their own pieces, the opponents are in what's similar to a quantum state. But in that game, measurement reports that the move was illegal and that a different move should be done instead.
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The rules are explained on the Quantum Chess page
https://quantumchess.net/how-t... [quantumchess.net]
It was based on a Kickstarter and there's a trailer showing a "game" between Paul Rudd and Stephen Hawking (when he was alive).
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What an awful website. Can't even scroll the page without allowing it to run javascript. Can't highlight or select text. At least it works in reader mode.
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I found the rulebook, but it's still on the vague side, as if one has to experiment to get the answer - basically the two points that I mentioned.
Currently, chess is well explained, with piece movement basically being well known. Thus I might be holding Quantum Chess to likewise a gold standard too.
Now I see logic in Trump's "I won" (Score:2)
All we needed was a harder version of chess. (Score:2)
Great new, I was at such a loose end having worked out the forced win as white :-)