26:20 "It's so annoying when you realize every one of your mistakes, right after you make them" Anna describing every game of chess I've ever played

You should make some videos on the deeper theoretical lines: the Peking opening, the Muscovy system, the Mallard Gambit, the Bufflehead defense, etc.

Quack

I'm enjoying this duck chess arc so much. In the middle of this insane controversy it's nice to have some wholesome chess content to watch.

Anna: calculating opening theory Eric: do ducks build nests?

I know that we probably can't hope for this to be taken seriously enough for titles or named openings or anything like that but I actually think this is probably the best new chess variety I've seen so far. The rules are only slightly adjusted and yet it creates a whole new layer of strategy as a result. I unironically hope this becomes big. It will likely inevitably be ruined when there's a good engine for it but idc, it'll be glorious until then. I also really want to make an otb duck piece for my set now as well. PS: love how into this Anna got, she's always a great colab

You guys both have the same sweet, gentle type of energy and its so nice to watch you play together

The chess world is exploding and Eric just be like: I think there might be some sort of funny duck mate here.

Anna: NO MERCY !!! No mercy for real this time !!! **A few moments later** Anna: Eric, this game never happened. 😂

When Eric says “interesting” move, he generally means it. However, watch out if he ever says “really?!”

I just love all the quotes that come from duck chess... "it seems terrifying for me but the duck will keep me safe" @ 13:08

The best moment was when Eric said "It's ducking time" and ducked all over Anna's board. Truly one moment in the world. The duck spoke for itself

I never ducked so fast on a video

Two of the most wholesome chess streamers playing duck chess . Duck Lord Eric imparting his vast knowledge to newbie Anna Duckling . 🙂

My theory as someone who does not play chess is that the bishop is still worth as much as the knight due to the fact that permanently blocking a bishop’s line of sight locks up your ability to use the duck for attacking or defending other locations.

15:33 was one of the best chess moves I've ever seen.

There is one problem with Duck Chess engines: It would take double the calculation power, if not more, to calculate to the same depth, because the duck has access to all empty squares and not so many of them can be ruled out by being unimportant, meaning all possibilities have to be calculated. Additionally, transpositions are much less likely to occur, which means that the time it would need to calculate to the same depth would be much longer

I love Anna, such a good match for Eric’s streams and videos, matching wholesome vibes

"it's kind of like distinguishing between a deer and an elk" so kind of Eric to speak to Swedes in a language they can understand.

I tried to get stalemated once, but thought it was defined as the only legal move getting my king checked and not being able to block with the duck in any way. sadly as it turned out we played the last 6 minutes only to figure out I had 0 chance of stalemating and I lost :)

27:07 That exchange was hilarious. Eric has such a nice way of describing the exact same view that Anna's mom had lol

"checkmate work a little differently in this game" hits different when you've watched the struggles of a developing duck master on this channel lmao

Nice thing about this game is you can easily play it over the board with like anything that fits on a chess sqaure

As the unofficial Grand Ambassador of Chess, Eric's earnest journey into Duck Chess has brought joy to the world.

The enthusiasm that they both have is so complimentary. Two of my favourite chess streamers. Thanks.

it’s really cool how well duck chess has been going for you / in general, but seriously you guys are so chill i love y’all’s synergy in these collabs.

I'm pretty convinced that knights are better than rooks. I've had so many games where the rook is moving side to side on the back rank and the opponent puts the duck in front of the rook. It feels like the knight is the only piece besides the king or queen that plays a role in the end game.

It was great seeing you both having fun and still not holding back! "Veni, vidi, ducki." ... "I came, I saw, I ducked." Julius Caesar

10:02 "i ll show you what happens. Free bishop". It was too good 😂

Eric must be the prettiest chess streamer. Anna looks ok too.

So wholesome. Love the part where Anna learnt the goose duck lore

Lmao classic Anna lagging out when she was in a good position

instructions unclear, quacked

Rooks also don't protect each other from afar like they do normally, which causes their value to go down further. I feel like pawns lose less value than the other pieces, since only en passant and forward movement are obstructed.

This game is so funny, a squeaky noise or quack sound would put it over the edge. Great vid!

It was great to see you and Anna do this, cudos to you both. You complement each other👌

man really just went and dropped "quacktics" out of nowhere i was not prepared

It's always so strange to me when someone says they can't ride a bike (like Anna does around 41:40). I feel like every single person I know learned to ride a bike before they were 6. And I feel like I would have wanted to learn to ride a bike in my teens if I hadn't - it just enables you to get to so many places so much quicker. If I had grown up in a bigger city I could have seen my parents maybe having inhibitions about letting me go everywhere with a bike, but even then when I moved out (into a bigger city) to go to college I feel like learning to ride a bicycle would have happened immediately. At that point a car would have been an alternative, sure, but riding a bike home after drinking was a thing I regularily did, which obviously a car couldn't have replaced and also was at a time where buses didn't drive regularily anymore. The only other people I know of for sure that don't know how to ride a bike are all from the UK, so I am guessing it might just be that bikes become less popular as you go further north in Europe as the time during the year when riding a bike is enjoyable gets shorter.

Once I figure out how the horsey moves I’ll be a duck grandmaster.

2 best personalities together in 1 video. this is a must watch for everyone even for people that son't play chess. you're both just amazing human beings

En Quassant 🐣

Duck giveth, duck taketh away

I don't know why Anna said she was a beginner, I was really impressed by her play if she is new to the game, she was probably going to beat eric in the third game too

That's the first queen trap I've seen in duck chess, very nice :)

I love duck chess!! More of this please :)

Really enjoy these collab videos

I think engines might struggle with duck chess since there are significantly more moves per turn. For instance, on turn 1 white has 640 possible starting moves and black has 600-640 responses meaning that after turn 1 there's already about 400,000 possible board states. Compare that to standard chess's 400 board states after turn 1. Go has about 130,000. I think humans are good at aggressively pruning that search space since we place the duck using abstract concepts like blocking opponents pieces or freeing up a square for our piece. Computers have to be taught to factor in those concepts or train a neural network on it. I'd be curious to see something like alphazero try it since it learns through self-play.

Anna is so fun to watch. I don't know how she's not more popular.

Anna is so wonderful. All the duck puns were quaking me up. I wish you could have created a custom board to continue the game she crashed during. Idk if this is possible but I'm pretty sure it's easy.

This was so fun and wholesome to watch. I enjoyed this a lot. Please more duck chess. (:

That bishop to g3 trap was savage cleaned up most of the board by move 16.

This is actually such great content, the only thing that would make it better is duck quacking sounds

Loving the duck chess vids lately

What an absolutely GOATed collab

Duck Zugzwang is one of the coolest concepts I've seen. Love the quacktics!

I haven’t looked into this comprehensively, but at a glance there is hope for duck chess to remain engine free. On the first move in normal chess, white has 20 possible moves, and then black has their own 20 choices for a total of 400 possible combinations after one move each. However in duck chess, white has 20 normal moves and 32 duck moves for a total of 640 possible choices, with black having their own 640 choices for a total of 409,600 ways to play the first move of the game. This should be exponential growth and is possibly computationally intractable. As in, if your computer can compute Stockfish depth 20, it might struggle with depth 3 or 4 in duck chess.

Man teaching Eric how to drive must have been a wild experience.

40:41 I thought a simple stalemate position! White King on h8, white pawns on h7 and g7, Duck on g8 (put by black)

I think duck chess is so interesting because it could be played in person with just one extra placeholder piece

shes very fun

The learning curve is impressive.

Variants are awesome. I'd like to see a four player and duck chess tourney.

Great driving analogy at 40:58!

Can not get enough of these duck puns

YES I NEEDED THIS

With your knowledge and her looks, I’m all about this video 😊

Feels like knights are 5 pointers and rook and bishop 3 pointers because they are long range liner attackers blockable by the duck. Queen is probably still 9 pointer tho

I didn't know the goose chasing him story. I just started quacking because everybody else was.

Pretty excited to see the DM title

This is a great day for Duck Theory

That's how I am in regular chess. Realizing my mistakes after the fact.

35:30 "oh my time" "thats another concern" had me rolling xD

When Anna plays chess with the duck chess embodiment of John Green’s voice. 🙌🏻

thanks for sharing your quacktics!

"Quacktics!" what a great use of the word as verbage! [lol &a grin]

"When you play this game enough you will be able to find all the cool quacktics" Eric D. Rosen

My favorite chess streamers playing duck chess. Thank You!

Duck chess never disappoints

For a bit I thought duck chess was kind of just a gimmicky gimmick. However, it actually looks like quite the fun game, implementing even more strategy, almost turning chess into a whole new, exciting game. Nevertheless, I am concerned by Eric's stunning lack of quacks expelled from his mouth vessel.

It quacks me up how Eric finds all these quacktics quite quackly.

I don't know how to code but I have this variant I call "Chess X" that I play over the board with my brother. As far as I know just me and my brother play it. (SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE THIS LOL) How to play "Chess X" : (Setting up board) 1. Take away the bishops and rooks from the board. 2. Scoot the knights next to the king and queen. 3. Switch queen and king on respective side. (KING on COLOR) 4. Take the pawns that are usually in front of the rooks and put them next to the knights. (You should have pawns surrounding all of your valuable peices.) Peice move rules : (TP = Teleport) 1. King (Normal) 2. Queen (Normal) 3. Knights (Normal move set, BUT they can jump through the wall and go to the other side... FOR EXAMPLE: if black knight is on square B6 it could attack H5 or H7. Another example of knight movement could be A3 to G2 or H1.) ANOTHER RULE FOR KNIGHTS! you CAN NOT "Teleport" or travel through the wall to the other side twice in a row with the same knight. Example if black knight moves A3 to G2... then white plays any given move... you can't move the same knight back out of the way through the wall to A1. Although you can move it as a regular knight... if it has traveled through the wall its last move, a legal move would be like A1 to C2. (THINK OF IT LIKE THE KNIGHT NEEDS TO CHARGE UP TO TELEPORT.) (KNIGHT can only TP once per two moves of respective peice.) If one knight TP's through the wall, when it is your turn again, you could legally TP with your other knight but not with the same peice.) LAST RULE... KNIGHT can only TP through sides of board and not top and bottom. (Hopefully you understand) 4. Pawn (pawns in starting positions move regularly. Can move two spaces on first move like regular. En peasant is still possible. Once pawns get to 6th rank you can start to move pawns forward diagonally aswell without having to kill. Pawns can promote as usual. You can promote pawns to Knights, Queens, or even the BISHOPS AND ROOKS that you took off the board in setting up the board.) BLACK GOES FIRST. FIRST TO CHECKMATE. HAVE FUN. (You can add or subtract any house rules!🙂) SINCERELY, SafeToSea A CHESS LOVER. (Edit: rules)

My piece rating for duck chess: Pawn - 1.5 (when a pawn defends a piece, the duck can’t do anything, meaning it’s more powerful in this variation) Bishop - 2 ( long ranged piece that can be easily stopped by the duck rendering it obsolete) Rook - 3 (long ranged piece easily stopped by the duck, yet has more possible squares it can go on) Knight - 5 (short ranged piece the duck can do nothing to but stop a single square for escaping, can still fork pieces) Queen - 9 (still the best piece, long ranged but the most versatile of them all) I think this point system can be right because: 2 Knights can be worth a little more than a Queen A Rook and a Bishop are collectively worth a Knight A Bishop is not better than a Rook. Would love for people to chime in and say their opinions

I’ll just double fianchetto my two bishops…. **sips tea**

Anna: *mutes herself to fully concentrate for the best game ever no mercy for real. Eric: Do ducks build nests? Hmm... They probably do, right? I mean, they're bird creatures 🤔

DM - Duck Master

9:55 lmao I knew she'd do that right when she was like, "Wait."

GM players scared of the upcoming DM players

Say it say it!... "Quacktics" "Yayyyyyy!!"

she’s the cutest chess player and eric is the sweetest monster 😂😂😂 “thats what happens!” he could be the world’s kindest assassin 😂😂

I would love to see Eric play Crazyhouse

oooh you know you can always preclude en passant in duck chess that's a fun trick if someone isn't expecting it

Duck chess marathon! Leets goo!

The ducksuit speaks for itself

One rule can change the game so much.

Take a shot everytime she says "YAA".

There should be a Duck Master title.

40:55 "a lot of it is just getting experience. It's kind like..." well, chess? x)

The duck speaks for itself

As far as piece value goes, it seems like the bishops and rooks have 4 directions to go, and the knights and queens have 8, it's a lot easier to obstruct the rooks and bishops than the N and Q, however, if you're in a position where there are more than one thing hanging because of a rook or bishop, they can become very strong, like here 15:25 (pretending Eric didn't have that super cool quacktic

Erduck Roseduck the Magduck Carlduck of Duck Chess Duck