Gardner's Minichess Variant is solved
Computer Science and Game Theory
2013-07-29 v1
Abstract
A 5x5 board is the smallest board on which one can set up all kind 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 9x10^{18} legal positions and is comparable in this respect with checkers. We weakly solve this game, that is we prove its game-theoretic value and give a strategy to draw against best play for White and Black sides. Our approach requires surprisingly small 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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1307.7118,
title = {Gardner's Minichess Variant is solved},
author = {Mehdi Mhalla and Frederic Prost},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1307.7118},
year = {2013}
}