Gardner’s Minichess Variant is Solved

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Mhalla, Mehdi¹ | Prost, Frédéric²

Affiliations: Université de Grenoble - LIG, B.P. 53 - 38041 Grenoble Cedex 09, France

Note: [1] Mehdi.Mhalla@imag.fr

Note: [2] Frederic.Prost@imag.fr

Abstract: A 5 × 5 board is the smallest board on which one can set up all types of chess pieces as a start position. We consider Gardner’s minichess variant in which all pieces are set as in a standard chessboard (from Rook to King). This game has roughly 9 × 1018 legal positions and is comparable in this respect with checkers. We weakly solve this game: we prove its game-theoretic value and give a strategy to draw against best play for White and Black sides. Our approach requires surprisingly little computing power. We give a human readable proof. The way the result is obtained is generic and could be generalized to bigger chess settings or to other games.

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-2013-36404

Journal: ICGA Journal, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 215-221, 2013