An ambition to create a game on par with chess.

Try the game. Why I Fell in Love with Chess—and the Frustration That Followed I have played chess since childhood. I played a few games with my mom and managed to win. However, the era of COVID and online chess arrived; while I maintained an Elo rating of around 1400 on Lichess, I didn't want to go any higher if it meant having to study openings. In 2016, the AlphaGo matches took place in my country, and subsequently, engines like AlphaZero also emerged. Since I have long been interested in computer chess. However, developer communities like the one behind Stockfish were highly complex, making it extremely difficult for an individual to make a meaningful contribution. (I still remember that chaotic document containing hundreds of Stockfish experiments.) Consequently, I set aside that childhood dream to focus on my college studies. Now, as some recent frontier AI models have come to completely dominate mathematical research, I gave up on my studies and lived in a state of despair. I just needed something interesting to do—or perhaps a project to add to my LinkedIn profile. I decided to try my hand at developing a new game. The initial version was 3D, and I experimented with topologies featuring multiple holes; Originally, it was a complex game where the path changed according to lunar tides. That is how it came to have the awkward name "SYZYGY." However, these designs proved incompatible with a good user experience. 3D rendering demanded more complex and extensive designs, and achieving a clear view was incredibly difficult. So, I returned to the beginning. I abandoned those ambitious ideas and adopted standard chess conventions: an n×n square board, a perfect-information turn-based format, and a chess clock. While this is the current result, there is still a long way to go. I am particularly unsure about the implementation of NNUE due to my limited knowledge in that area. I plan to open the project on GitHub for anyone interested in contributing, so feel free to get in touch. The Game So, here is a small puzzle. Two players each control one piece on a square grid. On your turn you either take a step, or you knock out one of the squares next to you so nobody can ever use it again. You can't walk over your own footprints, and if you can't move, you lose. Picture an mjx-container[jax="CHTML"] { line-height: 0; } mjx-container [space="1"] { margin-left: .111em; } mjx-container [space="2"] { margin-left: .167em; } mjx-container [space="3"] { margin-left: .222em; } mjx-container [space="4"] { margin-left: .278em; } mjx-container [space="5"] { margin-left: .333em; } mjx-container [rspace="1"] { margin-right: .111em; } mjx-container [rspace="2"] { margin-right: .167em; } mjx-container [rspace="3"] { margin-right: .222em; } mjx-container [rspace="4"] { margin-right: .278em; } mjx-container [rspace="5"] { margin-right: .333em; } mjx-container [size="s"] { font-size: 70.7%; } mjx-container [size="ss"] { font-size: 50%; } mjx-container [size="Tn"] { font-size: 60%; } mjx-container [size="sm"] { font-size: 85%; } mjx-container [size="lg"] { font-size: 120%; } mjx-container [size="Lg"] { font-size: 144%; } mjx-container [size="LG"] { font-size: 173%; } mjx-container [size="hg"] { font-size: 207%; } mjx-container [size="HG"] { font-size: 249%; } mjx-container [width="full"] { width: 100%; } mjx-box { display: inline-block; } mjx-block { display: block; } mjx-itable { display: inline-table; } mjx-row { display: table-row; } mjx-row > * { display: table-cell; } mjx-mtext { display: inline-block; } mjx-mstyle { display: inline-block; } mjx-merror { display: inline-block; color: red; background-color: yellow; } mjx-mphantom { visibility: hidden; } _::-webkit-full-page-media, _:future, :root mjx-container { will-change: opacity; } mjx-math { display: inline-block; text-align: left; line-height: 0; text-indent: 0; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; font-size-adjust: none; letter-spacing: normal; border-collapse: collapse; word-wrap: normal; word-spacing: normal; white-space: nowrap; direction: ltr; padding: 1px 0; } mjx-container[jax="CHTML"][display="true"] { display: block; text-align: center; margin: 1em 0; } mjx-container[jax="CHTML"][display="true"][width="full"] { display: flex; } mjx-container[jax="CHTML"][display="true"] mjx-math { padding: 0; } mjx-container[jax="CHTML"][justify="left"] { text-align: left; } mjx-container[jax="CHTML"][justify="right"] { text-align: right; } mjx-mi { display: inline-block; text-align: left; } mjx-c { display: inline-block; } mjx-utext { display: inline-block; padding: .75em 0 .2em 0; } mjx-mo { display: inline-block; text-align: left; } mjx-stretchy-h { display: inline-table; width: 100%; } mjx-stretchy-h > * { display: table-cell; width: 0; } mjx-stretchy-h > * > mjx-c { display:

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