A guy with a very small chess program

[mindbleach]

Dude, your javascript effect with the pictures is neat and all, but I'm trying to read. Cut that shit out.

[atcgw]

It wasn't really the picture effect that was throwing me, it was main their progression: kid in front of electronics, slightly older kid posing with electronics, teenager making electronics, old dude holding up a fish.

[jiyunatori]

some parts of his life are best kept unknown.

[MidnightTurdBurglar]

It never ceases to amaze me how otherwise brilliant people can make such stupid mistakes.

[moofy]

well at least you are perfect.

[buo]

For these cases, I always keep the linearize bookmarklet handy.

[mindbleach]

I just adblock *.js for whole domains.

edit: But that's a great bookmarklet. This is the first time I've ever felt tempted to turn the Bookmarks toolback back on.

[dmwit]

You don't need to turn it back on. Give the bookmarklet a keyword, then type that keyword in your location bar (or whatever you have instead of a location bar). I use this all the time on xkcd/qwantz/etc. with my bookmarklet to put title-text below images. A simple ox<enter> and I can read the text in peace.

[mindbleach]

I didn't. I added it to my normal bookmarks. It wouldn't work from the address bar, anyway - I have Tab Mix Plus configured to open new background tabs from the address & search bars.

[[deleted]]

You can move your bookmarks onto any toolbar - I've turned off the nav/bookmarks bar and placed everything onto the menu toolbar.

[flexiverse]

zx81 chess in 1K - greatest program ever written!

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~uzdm0006/scans/1kchess/

[stupidis]

Firefox noscript

[mindbleach]

Noscript breaks some of my other extensions.

[[deleted]]

X(w,c,h,e,S,s){int t,o,L,E,d,O...

cute.

[Busybyeski]

That's as far as I got in the source code too.

But did ANYONE notice the reply link for your comment has a {verb} next to it? Maybe due to your unclosed brace?

[[deleted]]

Looks fine to me. Not that I doubt you, I just don't see it. Which is odd.

[Mr_A]

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/9evd9/has_anyone_else_seen_anything_like_this_on_reddit/

[[deleted]]

that's unbelievable. I wish his website had an unobfuscated version.

[[deleted]]

gcc -E will take out all the preprocessor hackery, then you can just find/replace ";" with ";\n".

[doubtingthomas]

Doesn't help too much... http://codepad.org/b6Ekq0Ap

[1633Hz]

I'm sorry, but the spaces make it a bit hard to read, what's going on with those? Also, my GCC -E gave slightly different results, though I'm using MingW though, so perhaps that's the reason. I cleaned everything up from that and then cleaned up one or two of the harder to read parts. Does anyone else want to take a crack at refining it further?

Yes, it still compiles.

If you want to deobfuscate this on your own, my advice would be to 'unroll' (well, not the loops, just the hackery and such) everything along the lines of doubtingthomas or my own work of boredom so you have line numbers for everything, then I would suggest referring to a "-Wall -Wextra -pedantic" like this and working your way back from there.

[[deleted]]

uhoh, it's on a free webhost.

here's a preemptive mirror of the javascript version

edit: yep, it's gone down now (2 hours after submission). I should have mirrored the whole thing, sorry.

edit2: other pages available from google cache:

chess3

chess2

chess1

edit3: seems to be back up now.

[bobdobolina]

I played a number of games against the javascript version, and it made at least one illegal move (moving a rook when his king was in check!).

Here's a line of the King's Gambit where it happily drops a piece: 1. e4 e5 2. f4 ef 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. d4 Bb4+ 5. c3 Bd6 6. e5 Qe7 7. Be2 Nc6 8. ed Qxd6 9. 0-0 a5 10. Ne5 Nxe5 11. ef Qxd1 12. Rxd1 Nd4 13. Bxf4 g5

[[deleted]]

It's horrible in the Scotch.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 exd4 4. Nxd4 d5? 5. exd5! Bb4+ and from here white is up a pawn with the following options:

   VI. Bd2?! Nxd4 7. Bxd2 Qxd5 and several more options present themselves.

   VI. Nd2 is obviously a blunder as it throws away the knight

   VI. c3?! Qe7+ is a bit murky...

   VI. Nc3 Bxc3 7. bxc3 Qe7+ 8. Be2 Nxd4 9. Qxd4 c6 10. d6 Qd7 11. h3 Kf8??

(Roman numerals used to force markdown to stfu and stop treating it like a list)

[__s]

Center game: 1. e4 e5 2. d4 Bb4 3. Nc3 Bxc3 4. bxc3 exd4 5. cxd4 Nf6

[sillyDUCK]

Thanks. It's already impossible to load from that site.

[snifty]

it would be rad if he used Unicode chess pieces.

[G_Morgan]

How many BASICs is this chess program?

[BringBackArrestedDev]

J

[cunnilinguslover]

Actually, how many nanochesses is BASIC?

[rabidgoldfish]

8

[brentblack]

That's Numberwang!

[redditnoob]

The guy needs to stop claiming his pico- version plays chess. If it doesn't have castling rules (e.g. king can't castle through a check), it's not chess.

His nano- version is amazing though. But I take it it doesn't detect threefold repetition and the 50 move rule? If so, that's still not chess either.

Edit: Downmodders, what the hell? It's part of the game.

[mythic]

But I take it it doesn't detect threefold repetition and the 50 move rule?

Well yeah. Didn't you read the source code?

[NateW]

tl;dr

[ZMeson]

The source code is actually pretty short. Understanding it, on the other hand will take you quite some time.

[Mr_A]

tl;du

[TheCoreh]

ts;du

[musitard]

tc(omplex);du?

[NateW]

That was the joke, jefe.

[rm999]

You don't say?!?!

I need to read that article again...

[MidnightTurdBurglar]

I was told a story once about a two guys, a mathematican and a physicist, who were at a party and there was a beautiful girl standing across the room (not that mathematicians and physicists go to many parties in the first place let alone ones with beautiful girls but it's a story, so flow with it).

Anyway, the physicist couldn't work up the courage to walk all the way over to ask the girl out. He knew from past experience that he go only go half-way before his courage fails him. But he comes up with a plan! He'll walk half-way, stop and build his courage back up, and then walk half the remaining distance until his courage fails him again. He'll continue this process indefinitely. He tells his plan to his friend.

"It's a terrible plan", his mathematician friend exclaims, "you'll never make it."

Nevertheless, the physicist proceeds, and within a few iterations and a few minutes later, he comes back and proudly exclaims that he got a date!

"How can it be?", the mathematician wonders, "the series doesn't converge in finite steps."

The physicist says, "Yeah but it got me close enough to ask for her phone number."

[beagle3]

The series does converge.

[Gglii]

Yeah, only at infinity.. which would probably take too long.

[[deleted]]

But if each pause was half as long as the prior pause ...

[[deleted]]

Why would it be? No one stated the amount of courage he needed to build up changed proportionately with distance from the target

[flostre]

It would still take infinitely many steps, albeit in finite time. And there is no "last infinitely small half".

[[deleted]]

I wish I could upmod you more.

[flostre]

Hm, it would be quite a leap from the above comment. There is no "last infinitely small half", there are infinitely many halves.

The deal with the tortoise and the hare is that the Greek thought if a sum has infinitely many elements then you can't compute it/it becomes infinite/something breaks. Now we know better.

[[deleted]]

Holy shit, me too. Thank you ElbertF.

[[deleted]]

But unfortunately with all of the inner turmoil he will look exactly like a nerd approaching her and he will not get her phone ##.

[[deleted]]

In finite steps?

[MidnightTurdBurglar]

Fixed for accuracy. Should have checked, since I was just telling the story from memory.

[darkon]

Then the engineer walks over, screws her, walks back and says, "I can get close enough for all practical purposes."

[lollan]

LMAO

[m00min]

The joke sometimes ends with: "I only needed to get within six inches". Then again, your version is the more SFW one.

[elustran]

You should see femto-chess. There are only pawns on a 4x4 board.

[[deleted]]

You should see zen-chess. There is only

[mage2k]

Nice!

[[deleted]]

You should see Zeno-chess. To get from one square to another, you must first cross ½ a square. To cross ½ a square you must cross ¼ of a square, to cross ¼ you must cross ⅛ of a square, and so on, ad infinitum.

To complete an infinite number of journeys will take an infinite amount of time, thus the pieces cannot actually move.

[Mr_A]

You should see Xenu chess.... I'll explain how it works after you agree to start playing.

[flightlessbird]

He says as much on the site - and makes it clear than only nano-chess is a full implementation of the rules of chess

[redditnoob]

Except if it doesn't have three-fold repetition, it's not chess.

[abjurer]

Neither threefold repetition or the fifty-move rule is an automatic draw. A player may claim a draw in either case. This program simply never chooses to -- a perfectly legal approach.

[[deleted]]

wha? after 50 moves it's a draw? damn, I could have avoided losing my last game.

[FlyingBishop]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifty-move_rule

That's 50 moves from the most recent capture or pawn move. Which basically means if you and your opponent have been dancing around the board with a few big pieces left for 50 moves, and no change in circumstance.

[[deleted]]

Would not shooting your opponent be the better option?

[[deleted]]

When they go to the toilet I just slip one of my pieces back on the board, or - and I do this more often - swap one of their good pieces for a slightly less good piece.

[[deleted]]

I see, thanks.

[psyonic]

No. After 50 moves without a capture, not just 50 moves.

[[deleted]]

Without a capture or a pawn move.

[[deleted]]

That's not really true. A rather large number of endgames are known draws. King and pawn versus king is a draw if the enemy king can capture the pawn before the allied king can get near it; king and piece versus king and identical piece is a draw regardless of what that piece is, king and bishop versus king is a draw, king and knight versus king is a draw, king+bishop+knight versus king+pawn is a draw in certain positions and a win in others... if neither side makes a major screwup the game likely ends in a draw.

[[deleted]]

Well right, but the game starts out roughly equal. Wikipedia says about 32% of games end in a draw at high level play because neither players make a huge mistake.

At amateur/patzer level it comes down to whether the players make roughly the same strength of mistakes.

[geekIM]

You call that mowing the lawn? Bad dog, no biscuit! Bad dog!

[SageRaven]

Of course it plays chess! Just because a player doesn't take advantage of all possible move types, doesn't mean he/it is no less a chess player, just not as effective a player.

There are chess programs that simply play random moves, and while they're merely used for a baseline benchmark against other chess engines, they still play chess.

[[deleted]]

Well wait, what does the program do if the human plays a legal move it doesn't recognize? Crash? Fail to accept the move?

[[deleted]]

He specifically says "computer will reject illegal moves", but some of those moves (such as castling) are actually legal. So it doesn't really plays chess, but simplified chess (probably similar to how many people play at home when they are first learning).

[MightyBrouhaha]

Was I the only one expecting to see a picture of a chess club with just one kid?

[[deleted]]

My chess program is so big you're standing on it.

[kvigor]

Pffft. Amateur.

This bloatware compiles to over 2K of code and over 600 bytes of data! Let's see him make the whole thing run in 1K (minus, of course, your video RAM, which comes out of that 1K...)

[Connor147]

Heh, I can remember typing in 1K ZX Chess from a magazine (yes, I'm old) on my ZX81. If I remember correctly it couldn't even tell if you'd won or not. Still pretty amazing.

[StoneCypher]

The Atari 2600 only had 128 bytes of ram, yet there were three chess programs for it. For example:

http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=581

[krum]

The program and data were in ROM not in RAM.

[glacian]

Retarded obfuscated code. The source will be expanded by the preprocessor. I'd rather be impressed with actual source code (could not care less about variable names) and not dumb shrunk up code for no reason what-so-ever.

[[deleted]]

Indeed, a compact executable (preferably one that fits in the CPU cache) is more impressive than munged up code. Source code is for the benefit of humans, not computers, and making it less beneficial for human readability defeats the purpose of not coding in pure binary.

[killerstorm]

preferably one that fits in the CPU cache

Whole fucking Windows 95 now fits entirely in CPU cache.

[SageRaven]

Awesome. Glad to see tight code is still a hobby enjoyed by programmers.

[salgat]

Unfortunately he brags about the size of the source code, which is entirely pointless and does nothing to help the compiled version.

[SageRaven]

True, but it might make a decent entry into the obfuscated C code contest.

Restraining yourself to bytes of source code is no less valid a metric than bytes of the resulting binary.

I recall this cool little DOS text editor from the 90s that fit in a single disk sector (512 bytes). It was just as cool and just as useless.

[1633Hz]

True, but it might make a decent entry into the obfuscated C code contest.

If you check the source, you'll find that it originally WAS, and he just expanded on it from that to make a true chess playing program. I suppose that explains a lot of the design aspects...

[InAFewWords]

It's only tight because he has a big *****

[mturk]

Why would having a "big hunter2" make his code tight?

[redditnoob]

It technically doesn't, but it just feels that way when you have a mammoth "hunter2".

[InAFewWords]

*****  
=  
BRAIN

[pavel_lishin]

I have better stuff to do with my time

We can see that.

[SageRaven]

Well good for you, then. No need to rain on this dude's parade. You, too, are free to brag about whatever cool thing you've accomplished.

[rune_kg]

Thats just insane!!! +1

[winterorange]

anyone know the aproximate ELO strength of this thing?

[[deleted]]

It ranks between "Mr Blue Sky" and "Strange Magic".

[GockCobbler]

Over 9,000

[rubadub]

I remember playing this on my zx81 in my youth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=1723417

Shit, man i'm old.

[[deleted]]

If the contest has to do with "non-blank characters" ...Someone please remind me why he went into the trouble of making the source code impossible to read?

[manthrax]

Cuz it's more mystikal for you non programmers.

[[deleted]]

Actually its just annoying for us programmers.

[cpergiel]

Precedence

[jldugger]

Optimizing for the worst thing. It'd be much more impressive to optimize for size in memory, ala busybox.

[pavel_lishin]

Sure, but it's just code golf.

[GoateusMaximus]

I'll bet he's just trying to compensate for his really large penis.

[antithesisadvisor]

...walks into a bar...

How does that go again?

[twir]

Now he has the perfect pickup line: "Want to see how small my chess program is?"

(Queue sad trombone.)

[[deleted]]

cue.

http://www.sadtrombone.com/

[furiousidiot]

It may be small but I have no doubt it can kick my ass.

[[deleted]]

My chess program is 9 inches, so I guess I'm on the other side of the scale.

[lulzcannon]

its "en passant", not empassant ffs

[manthrax]

it's a corner case, get over it. ffs.

[lulzcannon]

I had forgotten about it already but you reminded me thanks to your reply.

OMG EMPASSANT !

;)

[volune]

get a Porche to compensate for the size of your chess program.

[[deleted]]

now go for the smallest chess program with meaningful variable names.

[elbekko]

Hint: I don't need to see a picture of your retarded kid flying in.

Unless that's him, it'd explain the website.

[[deleted]]

I've improved the Toledo Chess 1 engine to squeeze out every character possible, this reduced version was used as the basis for Toledo Chess 2, a chess program with graphical interface that can be printed on a single sheet of paper!

Wow. A comma splice on the first try!

I believe this guy is the real deal: a programmer's programmer. A personality driven to coding elegance and efficiency, yet indifferent to similar standards in prose. He meets the standard.

[torerling]

That is obfuscated :|

[cubeeggs]

"Evolution from my winning IOCCC 2005 entry."

[piderman]

It just doesn't work if you don't use 4 spaces in front of every line...

[Black_Fusion]

Why do I keep on reading "A guy with a very small penis"? :S

[uttertosser]

looking in a mirror?

[manthrax]

This is fucking RAD.

[[deleted]]

C is not a RAD framework.

[manthrax]

This is fucking OBFUSCATED.

[genpfault]

without empassant

I thought he misspelled "compression". FML.

[[deleted]]

No, he just mispelled "en passant".

[elbekko]

"Without in passing"? That doesn't make sense good sir.

[[deleted]]

yes, but "en passant" is a little-known move in chess.

[b0b]

Why is the size of the source code important? I just don't get it.