Gardner's Minichess Variant is solved

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.

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Source https://hal.science/hal-00944409
Author Mhalla, Mehdi, Prost, Frederic
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated May 6, 2026, 23:54 (UTC)
Created May 6, 2026, 23:54 (UTC)
Identifier hal-00944409
Language en
contributor Calculs algorithmes programmes et preuves (CAPP) ; Laboratoire d'Informatique de Grenoble (LIG) ; Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 (UPMF)-Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP)-Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 (UPMF)-Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP)-Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
creator Mhalla, Mehdi
date 2013-07-26T00:00:00
harvest_object_id 55732772-6fd7-4253-aebb-83ebd6156cf1
harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2025-09-27T00:00:00
relation info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/arxiv/1307.7118
set_spec type:UNDEFINED