If you have ever been curious about pushing the game of chess to its extremes, especially with the help of computers, you may have already asked yourself this question. What is the worst possible chess game? I have sought to answer this question.
The idea for this article came from a joke made in the chess club in which I occasionally play. One of the club members was having fun showing a particularly bad game from start to finish, and it was quite funny. After talking to the player, we asked ourselves the question: if you played the worst moves, what would the worst game in the world be like?
1st attempt: manual step-by-step In order to answer this question, I turned on the analysis board and started to play manually the worst moves (or at least I tried). The problem lies in the multitude of possible moves. Of course, we know for sure that the first worst moves are 1.g4 f5, but after that? I've decided to test every legal moves, but it soon proved far too time-consuming to check every legal move.
2nd attempt: random.move() After deciding that there were far too many possible moves, I realised that it would be necessary to computerise the process. A friend suggested that I play random moves. After all, chess is anything but a game of chance! There are some chance factors in games between humans, as described by GM CheckRiseMate in his article "Is chess a game of luck?", but here we're talking about games between machines. So I downloaded the stockfish engine, and coded a python interface so that I could play against it. It would have to play one of the possible legal moves, and that was it. Here's what it did No depth of analysis, nothing. After playing the game, I analysed it: 19% accuracy! Low, but not enough.
3rd test: Engine handling Finally, after the end-of-year tests, I decided to take a more serious look at the question, and to modify the opening repertoire of the engine to give it only some openings: 1.b4, 1.f3, 1.c3 and 1.g4. No repertoire with black, just play as badly as possible. And here, after many games, is an example of what can be created if you play some of the worst possible moves:
https://lichess.org/BeGlmFnV
5% accuracy !
Conclusion: Lichess should extend game analysis to games of more than 150 moves! Did you like this article? Feel free to like it!
