Endgames in bidding chess

Abstract

Bidding chess is a chess variant where instead of alternating play, players bid for the opportunity to move. Generalizing a known result on so-called Richman games, we show that for a natural class of games including bidding chess, each position can be assigned rational upper and lower values corresponding to the limit proportion of money that Black (say) needs in order to force a win and to avoid losing, respectively. We have computed these values for all three-piece endgames, and in all cases, the upper and lower values coincide. Already with three pieces, the game is quite complex, and the values have denominators of up to 138 digits.