Crazy(house) chauvinism why?

Creative works such as this site should have personality. I for one hope the developers take risks and try to popularize things they think are genuinely interesting, things they can get passionate about. While popular demand should be considered, I would be happy to see lichess not letting it dominate them completely.

When I stand up against variant chauvinism it is because I find it disturbing that valuable things get supressed. Of course you can argue against ultra bullet ( but it can't be denied that it is popular ).

However had I written this post two months ago ( and I was seriously considering doing so, just I did not have as clear case as this one ) I would have spoken up for Antichess.

When crazy was introduced it attracted 4300 players per week and anti 2200 players per week. As time went by despite favoritism towards crazy, crazy fell to 3300 players while anti rose to 2400-2500 players. So the margin decreased to 800 from 2000.

Also Antichess is a very deep game, certainly one that encourages research and contributes to the overall development of one's mental state.

Yet this game is completely neglected and despite its falling number crazy is still favorized for I don't know what the hell reason?

@sakkozik Antichess is weakly solved, which encourages baseless (and sometimes based) accusations of cheating. It's a fun variant but adding more official antichess tournaments would likely require more moderators to process more reports.

Who is arguing against ultrabullet? Are you even listening?

What does Antichess being weakly solved has to do with accusations?

What do accusations have to do with a game being deep and useful for mental development?

Any argument based on the above is outrageous.

Here are some facts about the Antichess solution:

( source: http://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/~watkins/LOSING_CHESS/ )

Proof trees (with md5sum of bz2 file)

easy12.done.bz2 (1.5MB) 5d7fede37dafc29509ef7cf118574334
e3c6.done.bz2 (2.3MB) 382021495d0d34403fe2d4dc22c815b2
e3Nc6.done.bz2 (13MB) 00c913623d16c7892833b65ca28b36e3
e3Nh6.done.bz2 (20MB) 417b33f08fd90afa017931e2ed9cde48
e3g5.done.bz2 (54MB) 1f6fee7a9d0acfa3c1c3fb5cdc21da26
e3b5.done.bz2 (103MB) 4fe3f64fae21247092499dd8263fe4f7
e3e6.done.bz2 (63MB) 54149388cd3fca7b84f867e846e5a3a0
e3c5.done.bz2 (289MB) 65f52983aa0b99444c1e7c799943b223
e3b6.proof.bz2(740MB) d19df1d18518c7a216b44a1e878550cd

So we are talking about a cca. 1 GB proof ZIPPED!

There is no human on Earth that can possibly learn that amount of data.

The simplified solution which I did extensively study has 544768 lines. These lines end in positions where a human or at least an engine should be able to see the mate, but this is not even the case: some simplified lines Stockfish cannot resolve.

Learning 544768 lines is also completely impossible for a human.

Antichess being solved is a misleading notion.

What is true is that the solution gives you deep ideas, and catch moves in some critical situations. But this just encourages research.

What antichess being weakly solved has to do with accusations -- of which I stated some were outright baseless -- is these two things:
1) An increase in suspicion & in reporting from people unfamiliar with the facts (and people who don't think logically)
2) An increase in difficulty of handling cheat reports as the solution becomes simpler & more accessible, and players memorize more of it. While few players can memorize all of it, now a player who wins many consecutive games against average players might be acting upon prior knowledge.

As for Stockfish, though it plays the variant there are numerous antichess engines such as Nilatac which use superior search algorithms such as Proof-Number search (PN^2). A player familiar with popular lines of the solution could use such an engine in 1 key position per game to win against average opponents and maybe escape detection.

Antichess is weakly solved by definition. A strong solution would require solving the complete problem space as opposed to the start position.

Lets get back on topic:

chess is for pussies
anti chess is boring
atomic sucks

Crazyhouse above all

Yeah, I have heard about those players who make one key move per game with assistance. Those are the wonder players with great self restraint and ingenious camouflage. They may have been abducted by aliens who taught them a thing or two.

Only I don't know one thing: why on EARTH is this special to Antichess?

I understand that we are discussing the same subject, however when you summarily discredit my statements it's difficult to have a constructive conversation.

Thanks sakkozik for lightening up the antichess case. Toadofsky, i guess all the fuss, cheats, alts in antichess once again shows the fun(ner) nature of the game (vs most other variants). Not that people dont take it seriously. au contraire, people take it seriously in a fun, sometimes childish way. Also, antichess is still way more understudied than chess, which makes it interesting for a sustainable competition between two players