Post #1690753

Happy to announce my new paper, "Chess on Half the Board is a Win for White"! A result I am quite proud of, achieved through a combination of game theoretic analysis and manual case study. Abstract: > A centuries-old question in game theory is whether, in the game of chess, the first player can force a win. While the game tree is so large as to despair at ever finding an answer, we can hope to derive new insights from solving reduced versions of the game. > Chess on half the board is such a version, with conservative estimates putting the number of possible game trees at \(10^{50}\) or more. Nevertheless, via an explicit construction, we are able to prove conclusively that this game is a win for the white pieces. Paper: https://bowaggoner.com/papers/2025/chess-on-half-the-board.pdf