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 Smacks wrote:

 heartserenade wrote:

So.... around 50/50? Huh.

Are you like, trying to contradict me for contradiction's sake?

Actually, it's more like 38% to 27%, with the rest of the games (about a 3rd) being draws.

I stand corrected. That is significant. I guess this is why they hold multiple games and changing sides.

 heartserenade wrote:

 Talys wrote:

 heartserenade wrote:
Chess is not perfectly balanced, but it's almost perfectly balanced.

Actually, it's not even close, for good/ranked players -- White's win rate is in the mid-50's (first move).

So.... around 50/50? Huh.

Are you like, trying to contradict me for contradiction's sake?

No, MID-50s. Like 55% win for White, vs 45% win for Black, by skilled players. That's HUGE.

Like Smacks said, lots of good players don't even try for a win when they play black; they just play for a tie.

Edit: here you go - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess

Chessgames.com 2015 - total score for white 54.95% (37.5 win white, 34.9 draw, 27.6 win black)
CEGT 2009 results - total score white 55.4% (34.7 win white, 41.3 draw, 24.0 win black)

Edit#2 - sorry, didn't see your post on page 2, heartseranade, wasn't trying to pound it in

Since approximately 1889, when World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz addressed this issue, the overwhelming consensus has been that a perfectly played game would end in a draw.

From the very same article you quoted.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It isn't a question so much of an imperfect game as imperfect players.

 Azreal13 wrote:
It isn't a question so much of an imperfect game as imperfect players.

You are assuming that playing a "perfect game" is equally easy from both sides, which it isn't. It's easier to find the best moves when you start the game with a better position and have initiative on your side.

Very interesting stuff.

Yes, I was referring to written moves for chess. There are definitely changes that would need to be implemented for it to work. Something like, you can not send a piece to a location occupied by a friendly piece, probably including when you know your opponent is going to take the piece at that location, or making the move end right before entering that space, or even counting that move count as a pass if the opponent doesn't take that piece. I did not even think about both players going to the same unoccupied space, maybe remove both pieces in a MAD type scenario.

As to 40K balance, I often think that changing the turn structure to:
I move, you move
I shoot, you shoot
Both Remove Casualties
I assault, you assault
Remove Casualties in Initiative order like now

But balance has been so messed up with the poor rules, and the Adhoc points per model generating system used, this will not save the games balance.

 Smacks wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
It isn't a question so much of an imperfect game as imperfect players.

You are assuming that playing a "perfect game" is equally easy from both sides, which it isn't. It's easier to find the best moves when you start the game with a better position and have initiative on your side.

I'm making no assumptions about any such thing. Perfect is perfect, the relative difficulty of achieving it is irrelevant, and likely impossible once you introduce a pair of humans and all the inherent psychology.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Perfect is perfect, the relative difficulty of achieving it is irrelevant, and likely impossible once you introduce a pair of humans and all the inherent psychology.

It's quite relevant. If you were trying to play a football game up hill, it would be of little comfort to you to hear that if you both play perfectly the score will be 0-0. That does not mean the pitch is fair, it just means white is not guaranteed a win (as in games like connect four where the first player always wins with perfect play), also chess hasn't been solved, so the game always being a draw is still speculation.

And, chess is quite a drawish game anyway. If you played football on a hill, but both players have goals that are only 12 inches wide, then there is a good chance the game will end in a 0-0 draw, even though one side had an advantage. An advantage in chess probably isn't enough to overcome the inherent drawishness of the game. 5-10% advantage with a 33% chance of a draw? You have to see how perfect play ending in a draw really has nothing to do with both sides being equal.

- On the OP's topic:

Adding variants to chess pretty much always make the game less balanced and interesting.

In this case, you lose the predictability of Chess (poor players tend to think that people playing chess have hidden strategies up their sleeves- but in actuality everything is on the board for both players to see). Adding random factors is also an issue- and we don't even want to go to how much trouble a checkmate is.

Chess is actually an extremely elegant game, which has been subjected to more scrutiny and analysis than any other game in history.


HOWEVER, your idea does work for games designed for it. Check out Crocodile Games' Wargods system- both players first give each unit orders, then take turns selecting a unit to move next. Pretty cool stuff.

I don't get the obsession with Chess. I dislike chess because it is deterministic

I prefer games where you have to take risks and deal with chance. In other words, wargames.

It might be possible to balance Chess perfectly by removing one pawn from the white starting position, for example (complete guesswork by me, this) but people who like chess like it the way it is. They accept the current design of the game and prefer to balance tournaments by swapping sides.

The same could be achieved in 40K by playing each game twice, first with your own army, then with your opponent's. I doubt many people want to do it like that, for a number of valid reasons.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
If you want Chess more like 40K use this

Spoiler:

I have that It is so off-the-wall random it only lasted 2 plays, though...

I can see how chess is too deterministic for some people. I knew a guy who loved almost every other game, but losing in chess would make him angry- while he'd still have a great time win or lose in pretty much every other game (I played Blood Bowl with him a lot, and he was one of our best players).

He thought that because Chess has no dice, it is completely free of chance, and that the same player will always win (and losing makes him a bad player in ways that losing a risk-reward game doesn't). In practice, it is more like a sport where people have good days and bad days- and sometimes their brains wear down before the end.

People make a lot of variants to chess, but I have yet to see one that adds more than it subtracts from the game (except for speed chess, where you've got 5 min or less on your clock- that works nicely).

Chess players tend to be open to trying out new variations for kicks, but they don't tend to take them seriously- and they'll always go back to standard USCF chess.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

The same could be achieved in 40K by playing each game twice, first with your own army, then with your opponent's. I doubt many people want to do it like that, for a number of valid reasons.

The first reason that I wouldn't want to play two sides of a 40k match is because list building is an important part of 40k strategy. Much of what determines the winner is what you brought to the table and what your plan is.

Playing reverse matches gets rid of that pretty much entirely, and (in my opinion) leaves you with a worse game in the end. And that's in addition to not having enough time to play two matches in a row.

Now, I understand where people are coming from when they advocate this for Age of Sigmar- AoS tries very hard to not be a competitive game, and so the double matches helps promote players into not creating powerful forces (since there's no reason by the rules that you wouldn't do that).

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Coin toss is balanced.

Points based games can get close enough to be functional, but never perfect.

There's a slightly higher chance of landing on the more detailed side, due to it being heavier.

Nothing is balanced. Not even weighing scales.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JamesY wrote:
Who would take priority if both players entered the same square?

Presumably, both die.

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

The same could be achieved in 40K by playing each game twice, first with your own army, then with your opponent's. I doubt many people want to do it like that, for a number of valid reasons.

The first reason that I wouldn't want to play two sides of a 40k match is because list building is an important part of 40k strategy. Much of what determines the winner is what you brought to the table and what your plan is.

Playing reverse matches gets rid of that pretty much entirely, and (in my opinion) leaves you with a worse game in the end. And that's in addition to not having enough time to play two matches in a row.

Now, I understand where people are coming from when they advocate this for Age of Sigmar- AoS tries very hard to not be a competitive game, and so the double matches helps promote players into not creating powerful forces (since there's no reason by the rules that you wouldn't do that).

Now, see, that's the funny thing. How often do you hear people talk about "point and click" armies, or stupidly overpowered armies, yet somehow "I'm the better strategist because I made a sequence of blindingly obvious choices."

So you have the "Our game doesn't use army points" historical wargamers come in, and they grade people on how well they do in the unbalanced situations, and everyone ends up playing both sides. Because in real life, you don't get to choose what your forces are--the rest of the world made your choices for you.

Chess is a bad comparison, 40k is a dice game.

Chess has no random outcome when a piece meets a piece, 40k does.

Randomness takes away a lot of strategy at random times. You can play odds, but you can't play the randomness because you do not know when an unlikely event will occur.

40k has strategic elements but will never become a "strategic" tournament game on the level of chess because a lot of 40k is based on randomness.

 Azreal13 wrote:

Since approximately 1889, when World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz addressed this issue, the overwhelming consensus has been that a perfectly played game would end in a draw.

From the very same article you quoted.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It isn't a question so much of an imperfect game as imperfect players.

Thank you Azreal. And if playing chess you alternate so any slight advantage that white has means both players get to try each colour (and in tournaments you alternate colour as much as possible to try to give each player each colour equally though it won't always work - 5 round tourney, etc). Anyways, it is a poor comparison. 40K is nowhere close to chess in balance nor will it ever be and as a totally different type of game why waste time on this issue. The issue for 40K is to be reasonably balanced - that is having internal balance within a dex and balance between armies. Other games provide it. GW has thrown up their hands and said who gives a ****. GW have only made things worse at every turn over the last few years by rapidly throwing in more and more new units with new special rules, limited (if at all) playtesting and a lack of desire to be involved with the 40K community to see where problems are and fix them through errata/FAQs.

The saddest part of all is that 40K has such potential (background, great models, etc) and with some effort could be a good game but as it stands is a poor game. Practically have to hope for a miracle to save 40K at this point.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't get the obsession with Chess. I dislike chess because it is deterministic

I prefer games where you have to take risks and deal with chance. In other words, wargames.

Card and dice games are also deterministic, we just think of them as "random" because we aren't perceptive enough to see what's going to happen. In the same way, chess does have an element of "luck", because neither player can see all of the possibilities. Sometimes you find resources you weren't counting on, or make a stupid mistake that ends up paying off because of something quirky.

There are also plenty of risks to be taken. Sacrificing pieces to try and weaken your opponent's castle position is quite common, and it's often unclear if the sacrifice will pay off with a checkmate or just fizzle out. Those games can be really exciting and intense.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It might be possible to balance Chess perfectly by removing one pawn from the white starting position, for example (complete guesswork by me, this)

It's difficult to say. Removing a pawn used to be quite a common way of handicapping one player, it's called giving 'pawn odds'. Typically it's the F rank pawn that's given, all the other pawns allow pieces to develop early when removed (which might actually be an advantage in the short term). In the long term, the player with the extra pawn should win the game, providing he can hold on to his advantage. He will attempt to trade pieces off the board, and then use the extra pawn to win during the end game.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
but people who like chess like it the way it is. They accept the current design of the game.

You might be surprised. Even Bobby Fischer, who was literally crazy about chess, knew there was issues with the game. That's why he invented Chess960, which is probably the most common chess variant played today. I think a lot of top players also appreciate that there are too many draws, among other problems with the game. But it's difficult to change something which is so culturally embedded, and the people at the top aren't going to upset the status quo while they're sitting pretty.

White is actually balanced with Black in Chess because White has no idea what you're gonna do. With black, you can prepare for this.

Except for a minor statistical advantage, due to the existence of turns. Tbh, Chess is as balanced as you're ever going to get with anything. No randomness, clearly defined rules, each side is the exact same...

There's a lot of other lower hanging fruit for balancing 40k. The I-go-you-go system while antiquated, isn't really the problem as far as I can tell.

The point system and FoC could do a decent job of providing reasonable balance, if GW wanted it to. If they kept it up to date and kept tuning it (like a few other companies do). But that doesn't happen. GW doesn't really care about balance.

They don't respect their game anymore, they've long since decided to just use it as a way to funnel money from their victims. I mean customers.

I-go-You-go isn't so much a problem as a traditional enabler of problems.

That it's coincidentally the simplest turn mechanic is just a coincidence, I'm sure.

IGOUGO is used in several tournament level Ancients rules but it does not have an unbalancing effect because other aspects of the game compensate.

For example, it's basically impossible to attack the enemy on the first turn, so there is always a chance to manoeuvre. Your ability to have your army do the things you want is often limited by morale and C&C considerations. Perhaps not coincidentally, all these things are missing from 40K.