Friday Fun #2
December 7, 2012
Friday has rolled around, and that means it is time for another science game to help you while away the afternoon!
This week, I’m highlighting a quantum game. (My mind must be lingering on that game I recently put on the back burner.) There are a handful of interesting games and simulations out there that highlight Quantum Mechanics. This one, though, has eaten up more of my time than any other…
Of course! Chess is just too simple. Sixteen different pieces on each team moving around a board. Pshaw! Easy! Any ol’ supercomputer could find the optimal moves. I want a challenge when I play a game. Why not entangle the pieces in strange superpositions? Instead of a Queen, you now have a piece that has a 50% chance to be a Queen, and a 50% chance to be a Pawn. You’ll only know what it’ll be AFTER you select it to move. Hey, you were planning on using the Queen to save your King from check? Too bad, it’s a Pawn now!
Sure, maybe I’m losing. But there’s a *chance* I’m winning!
Turns out, this isn’t some isolated game idea. There’s people actually writing papers about Quantum Chess. (It is formatted in LaTeX, so it is legit.) Papers are nice and all, but I want to really PLAY Quantum Chess. And thanks to Alice Wismath an undergrad over at Queens University, I can! You rock, Alice!
If you’ve ever played Quantum Tic-Tac-Toe, this is like that on steroids. Imagine a bunch of boxes with Schroedinger’s cats inside them. The cats are in one of two states (instead of dead or alive, though, they are Rook and Knight, say). Each different piece-spot (err, making up words now…!) has two different pieces it could really be. When you select the piece, you make a measurement on it, collapsing its wavefunction. It becomes one or the other. At least temporarily. If it lands on a white square, it stays as the same classical piece. If it lands on a black square, though, it goes back into superposition.
Now, I’m not a very good chess player. I quite enjoy the game, but I’ve never played enough to get good at all. The strategies get intense (so-and-so’s defense, and all that). And that makes the random element of this quantum chess so fun to me. I don’t feel so bad losing. I didn’t lose because I planned poorly… I lost because my Queen turned into a Bishop at the wrong moment!
The Quantum Chess is a java applet that you can play right online. I’ll note that the AI opponent is pretty good. I’m curious about the process the creator went through to craft the AI… do you start with some standard computer chess opponent, and then just branch to the many possible board states? I don’t know. But I do know the computer is tough to beat. I haven’t yet. If you do, let us know in the comments! Any tips for a guy who keeps losing?
-Andy
Write your comment