I learnt chess at an early age, though I haven't done a lot of playing over the years; I've invented one (or perhaps more) chess variants, though on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri that can quite safely be predicted not to have any influence from the Earth game: it's got a few twists - you have a citadel aka City, you have a Massif in the middle, and you have a set of free actors who are nominally on your side, in a "valley" running up both sides of the board: the trick is to suborn the opposition's free actors by placing one of your Lords (bishop plus Castle) within the free actors' "valley" on the opponent's side of the board, thus giving you a free pass to attack within the opponent's City and bypass the Massif, which is otherwise the key to success. I suspect I got a lot from my exposure to one of the Chinese versions of Chess, which I learnt to play in my late twenties.

Chess is said to be war abstracted, and a wargame of sort. To this end, I
figured I would look at what is involved war (and chess variants) and see
how they equate. Please look over this, discuss and debate. I will look
to post here and/or edit, if I see any more changes. Ok, onto the
elements, and how they map to chess:

• Terrain: The Board, or pawns in FIDE chess. This marks what is fought over. Pawns act as walls in FIDE chess, and protect the king.
• Units: Pieces.
• Air Units: Leapers.
• Transport Units: Pawns that promote to other pieces can be seen as this. Castling is a very abstract form of transporting. Gating could also be seen as matching this.
• Artillery: Units that capture enemy units without moving.
• Support: A piece that defends a friendly piece on the board.
• Reserves: Pocket pieces, or possibly what Pawns promote to.
• Weather: If you were to play with mutators for a chess game, that would seem like weather to me. A variable set of rules that may or may not appear in a game.
• Formation: The starting positions for pieces.
• Suppression: Pinning a piece.
• Generals/Commander: Players
• Headquarters: Chess King (Royal pieces)
• Morale: Emotional states of players.
• Scenario: A game variant (a set combination of all the above).

2. Having different formations, that meet guidelines, as is seen here:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSmultipleformat

3. Categorizing a standard set of rules variations, in the form of mutators. JP Neto explores this here:
http://homepages.di.fc.ul.pt/~jpn/cv/mutators.htm

4. Standardize a list of the names of pieces that fit certain move types.

These are just a few. I am fairly certain some others have slipped my mind.

You can use and do with the preset or customize it however you want.

I'm into random variants, so when I saw Alberto's issue, I took it as a challenge.

I have to admit I like the concept of the random pillars. I may use it as an option in some of my random variants. It's quite neat!

Cheers,
Jose

Thank you, both for Alberto and me! I know he will like this; would you mind if I grab this preset and put it in the Preset Primer? Or, you could add it, with a bit of explanation. I am very non-technical these days, and appreciate every bit of info I can get. This is definitely worth saving and adding to the primer.

Thanks again,

Joe

I created this simple preset that does what you need, randomize 2 Plinths per 6x6 quadrant:
http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game%3DShuuro%26settings%3DSetup2

I selected a red circle to represent the Plinths, and Knights with a little orange line on the bottom to represent Knights standing on Plinths.

You can customize the pieces however you want, but this preset will give you just enough to get your variant going.

To test it go to the link, and press the Move button. It will clear the pieces from the board and randomly place the plinths.

Now you are ready to place your pieces according to your rules.

The preset doesn't enforce any rules.

Good luck!

Jose

I see the Chieftain series as the ancient version, with Overlord introducing slightly more modern "weapons" and a larger [and in that sense more modern] army. These games are deliberately very chess-like. WarGame approaches the idea of a chess-wargame hybrid from the other direction, keeping only the deterministic captures of chess and its variants.

I expect this game to be a "proof of concept" sort of thing. Oddly, I see a more "ancient-style" game having longer movement factors as a possibility, to give at least a few/some pieces a ranged attack.

I was thinking of using hexes, but I decided to stick with squares to start. I'm currently looking at a few pieces on a 20x40 board, but I'd like to extend the long side to 45 or 50 if I can and still have a "1-screen" board that's reasonably visible.

I thought of a points system, and hidden setups - I have looked at 4x5 blocks of squares and pieces that could be bought as a whole - but I will probably offer that as an option, and go with a reversed setup of some sort with identical armies in exactly corresponding positions.

I still have to put in line-of-sight rules, but they are easy and obvious. The leaders are what I do not have down at all yet. They pose many difficulties. I've experimented with various sorts of leaders, but I don't know quite where to take these leaders. I was thinking of working up to the chain of command gradually, but envisioned 3, maybe 4, levels.

Now, if 3 levels, there'd be 2 top leaders, who would mutually activate each other as well as their subordinates. With 4 levels, it is not necessary that the top leader be very mobile. I could see a command post that moved 1, and used an activation up to do so. That would pin it down pretty well, but still give some flexibility.

I'm still not sure quite how many pieces each leader can activate.And with chain of command rules, I will have 2 kinds of activation, active and passive. Passive is just being within range of a higher-level leader, and it allows a leader to become activated itself. Active activation [really p-poor term, that] is what occurs in chief [and chesimals] to allow a piece to actually move in a turn. Ranges for the 2 types may be different for any given leader. I'm thinking the lowest-level leaders might move 2 pieces and themselves, or thereabouts. Not any good ideas about higher-level leaders, though I think any leader should at least be able to activate 1 piece to move every turn.

There's one more consideration, and that's the percentage of the army that moves each turn. At start, for FIDE it's 1 in 16. For the chief series, at start, it's 1 in 8. I don't know that I'd want to be moving more than 1/6th of my army at start, to keep some semblance of order and calculability in the game. Obviously, as pieces are lost, and leaders are preserved, the fraction of the army that moves each turn goes up. You're pretty much to the endgame when you're moving 1/3 of your army each turn, because if you are moving 1/2 of your army each turn, each non-leader piece has its own leader to move it, and after that, the leaders are coming into the front lines.

That's what I'm looking at so far. This is as far as I've gotten with a preset - not very:
[http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game%3DWarGame+1%26settings%3DWargame1]

Joe

Any leader can issue orders but cannot itself move unless it is within range of a higher-level leader.
So the highest level leader cannot move?

Cheers
Graeme

I've known about the Chess Variants site for years, but only recently got caught up in it again. I've become a fan of Game Courier, and, being a computer geek, I've gotten drawn into learning GAME Code and programming presets. The documentation for the language is a tad difficult for me to wade through, though, so I thought having an alternate reference on a wiki would be something worth trying. Lo and behold, a search-engine search revealed that there is already an unofficial wiki for the Chess Variants site, so here I am!

I like the reverse symmetry idea, it gives random setup variants a natural tension from the start. With each side starting with a strong half and a weak half. And with each side's strong half facing the other side's weak half and vice versa. One must decide to attack or defend. each of these necessarily take away from the other. I f you attack too much your defense suffers, If you defend too much you make no progress to winning!

Welcome!

-Ludic

My name is José Carrillo. I'm originally from the island of Puerto Rico, and I currently live in Ontario, Canada.

I'm the founder of the Fischer Random Chess eMail Club (FRCEC), and I'm a rookie chess variants designer.

I recently discovered the Prime Minister piece (Bishop + Knight) and Modern Chess (I know, I know, who cares about 9x9 variants…[I do!]), and after defining the general 'Modern' principles, have designed several 'Modern' Chess variants including: Modern Random Chess (9x9), Prime Ministers Chess (9x8), Contemporary Random Chess (8x8), Modern Capablanca Random Chess (10x8), and I'm working on a couple others.

A second test I did was measure the effect of centralization drive on the Lions. This indeed is fairly large. If I play two versions of Fairy-Max against each other, from an opening position that is Capablanca Chess with A and C replaced by Lions, the version that tries to centralize its Lion scores 57.5% (measured over 1000 games) against a version that doesn't. So leaving the Lion freely diffusing over the board was indeed a very inferior strategy. Backward moves (the same as moves away from the center, as a Lion in enemy territory doesn't survive long) are usually bad strategy. If the engine knows this, there is no harm in adding such moves to a piece, as it will only do them in case of an emergency. But otherwise, adding the moves will seduce the engine into using them too often, and the upward compatible (and thus better) piece will cause a worse result, because of the clumsy handling.

I have a fast compile now of the version that allows me to program the centralization drive of a piece through the .ini file, 1.5 times as fast as my own compile. This means I can switch my testing again to 40/1', speeding things up. So I am currently running games where one side has two handicapped Lions, lacking one of the moves (or a pair of symmetry-equivalent moves). When I have done all 14 of those, I will report the results here.

I now changed Fairy-Max such that it decides to apply this penalty to a piece not based on the programmed value, but by an independent parameter for each piece type in the .ini file. So I now can play with a Lion that is penalized for staying asleep on the back rank. Problem is that this version is 1.8 times slower, as I had to compile it myself. The previous version was made for me by a compilation wizzard, using a better compiler, which I dobn't have.

I hope this helps. A second problem is that Fairy-Max might not be equally strong with black and with white (even if I give black the first move). This because of the direction in which it scans the board for generating moves. For moves with equal scores it picks the first it encounters. And that gives it a bias for piece moves with black, and for pawn moves with white… Or, for a piece like the Lion, which has a veryl long list of moves, the move listed first might get a larger probability to be chosen than moves at the end of the list that defines it. And that same move might be a forward move for black, but a backward move for white, causing black and white on the average to handle the piece differently! This effect should be a lot larger if all moves tend to score equal, because the piece is not attracted to the center. A centralizing drive hopefully eliminates most of it.

So I have to be very careful. I will play each setup equally often with black and white having the handicapped Lion to eliminate the directional bias, and equal number of times with white and black having the first move (to eliminate the bias of the leading move). I am testing if there is already a black vs white bias in pure Capablanca Chess, but there seems to be none: If I alternately let black and white start, the result is not significantly different from 50%. I will play 400 games to establish this. Then I will play 400 games (200 with black, 200 with white) of a Lion that is attracted towards the center, versus a Lion that diffuses neutrally over the board, to make sure that centralizing a Lion is not an inferior strategy. After that, I am ready to try handicapped Lions vs normal ones.

Now this strategy backfires on very valuable short-range pieces, like the Lion. Fairy-Max is not able to exploit its capabilities well, because it does not centralize it. This leads to passive play, the main asset of the army often spending the entire game on or near the back rank.

To my surprise this causes an arifact if I play an unimpeded Lion against one that lacks certain moves. If I, for instance, disable the backward Alfil jups, and play the thus handicapped Lion against a normal one, it turns out the handicapped Lion beats the normal one by a sizable margin !? The reason is that, because the handicapped Lion has more forward moves than backward moves, it does not aimlessly wander around during periods where the engine gets out of ideas (and starts to do randm non-losing moves), but on the average moves forward, increasing pressure on the opponent, and often running into a winning tactic because of it.

So there is an unfortunate coupling between the way a piece moves, and strategy, which can have a sizable impact on strongly suboptimal strategies. Before I can meaningfully execute the test program I had in mind, I will have to learn Fairy-Max a better strategy for handling short-range pieces. Making them subject to the centralizing drive, would probably do it. For strong pieces like Q, A or C this centralizing has little to no benifit, because all these pieces are sliders. So they can be put into play easily also from the back rank. For short-range pieces, this is not the case, however.

My plan is to use the Lion as reference, and measure the contribution of each individual move (or pairs of moves related by lateral symmetry, as they should have identical contribution by symmetry arguments) to its value, by disabling them one at a time. Disabling a move will have a relatively small effect on the manouevrability, as the Lion has so many moves that it hardly suffers by missing one. But is should contribute proportionally to the second factor. So by measuring the drop in strength by disabling the move (by playing such a handicapped Lion against an unimpedent one), the second factor can be replaced by a sum of weights of all enabled moves, rather than just their total number. This way, each of the 14 possible move types can be assigned a weight. In fact I will measure the contributions of the capture and non-capture aspects of each move separately, and for the leaps will measure the effect of the leap being a 'lame' one, for capture and non-capture separately.

The captures will probably contribute almost nothing to the manouevrability, as Chess is not Pac-Man, and pieces are not manouevred in place by captures: the opponent will defend its pieces and recapture the first time we capture, so pieces usually do not survive their first capture. Unless it is a recapture itself, in which case we end up in a place by choice of the opponent, so usually not where we want to be. (Capture followed by 'recapture' on another square is far less common, as it is bad strategy to reply to a threat with a counter-threat,, as it gives the opponent the opportunituy to sac his threatened piece for anything of value.) So in a refined formula I expect the factor 30+5/8*N to be refined by replacing the N by a weigted sums over non-capture moves, while in the second term N will be replaced by a sum over capture moves.

It will take long enough to figure all that out, as there are 14 moves, whichhave to be tried as capture and non-capture, while 9 of them have also to be tested both ways in one or more lame versions. The double-Commoner you describe would furthermore introduce a kind of semi-lame moves, where a target an be reached through more than one lame path, so that the move can be blocked, but only by occupying several squares. (My guess is that such a move is practically as good as a direct leap.) And the lame Knight jumps are kid of double lame, as occupying one square can block two moves (of the Chinese Horse).

But after this project of disabling moves or move aspects one at the time in the Lion, whe should look how well certain special cases are predicted by the formula. I expect that for the weaker pieces (with only a small fraction of the Lion's move) the formula will not work, but will need some reduction factor for certain disadvantages that the moves it can do still have as a group. For instance, the Commoner is not merely an 8-target subset of the Lion, but a very special sub-set, where all distance-2 moves have been taken out. This is an especially detrimental combination of handicaps, as it reduces the speed of the piece. Similarly, taking away all color-changing moves will produce a global handicap of being color-bound, while taking away all color-conserving moves will cause some Zugzwang problems (the cause that KNNK is draw).

Another bad one would be to only allow moves in a certain direction, making the piece an irreversible one where every move would contract its 'event horizon' to cover a progressiely smaller part of the board. So I expect a piece that moves like the Pawn (but all moves capt+noncapt) to be far less valuable than a piece that moves diagonally forward and straight backward (fFbW), despite the fact that a forward move in general is worth much more than a backward move. So all these special conditions resulting from a fatal lack of cooperativity of the moves would have to be identified and quantified by measurements on the pieces that exhibit them.

And then I am not even talking about pieces that can do multiple captures in one move, or capture by jumping. These I don't consider proper Chess pieces, as one of the defining characteristics of a CV is that capture is made by replacement of the enemy piece on the target square. Checkers is not a CV! Fairy-Max does not support such pieces.

As this will be a very computationally intensive project, I am considering making a Joker80 derivative that supports other Leapers than Knight (plus a single King). Joker80 is far stroonger than Fairy-Max, and beats it at Gothic Chess even against a time odds of a factor 90. So it really would speed up things if I could use Joker80 to play the required matches. To achieve an accuracy of 1/10 of a Pawn (1.2% score) will require 1500 games…

In the 16 squares category, Charles Daniel and I both use a DWAF, which steps one or leaps 2 squares orthogonally or diagonally. His may capture 2 adjacent pieces by jumping over one to land on the other. It must be worth more.

And either of them is probably worth more than the minister or high priestess, as they are less approachable than the minister or priestess - a DWAF guards all 8 adjacent squares, and can only be freely attacked by a knight at a distance of 2. Approachability and attack fraction - the number of squares a piece attacks in its neighborhood - must affect the value of pieces, but how much? The indications you've given so far seem to say "not much".

So the extra Pawn made a score difference of 14.4%, in accordance with the 12% I usually find for pure Pawn odds. The statistical error in so few games is3-3.5%, so this can be called perfect agreement. Lion is hardly stronger than Q+P, though, and not even close to Q+2P like I guessed based on the first 41 games. So with Q=950, this would make Lion = ~1075. When I tried Lion vs Queen + Knight, the Lion was totally crushed.

Despite the Lion not being that much stronger than a Queen, there still is a marked synergy effect between the moves. All the pieces I measured so far that had 8 moves (A+F, D+W, D+F, N, K=F+W) did have piece values around 285 (The Knight, with 300, being the stongest). Those with 16 moves (A+F+N and D+W+N) did have piece values around 640. This is abut0.5 Pawn stronger than the sum of its component pieces. But the Lion has 24 target squares, and could be seen as the sum of three 8-move pieces (e.g. (A+F)+(D+W)+N). The values of those add up to ~875. So it seems the synergy here is a full 2 Pawns. There obviously is a contribution that is non-linear in the number of moves a short-range piece has. If N is the number of moves, the approximate piece value seems to be around 30*N+5/8*N*N. (For N=8, 16, 24 this formula produces 280, 640 and 1080, respectively.) For N=4 it would produce 130, and indeed the value of a pair of Ferzes was found to be about a quarter Pawn below that of a Knight (but this was on 8x8, so I really should redo it on 10x8).

This formula gives a very rough estimate of the value of a short-range piece, completely ignoring the details of the move pattern. It thus most certainly will have to be refined, for instance to take account of the different value of forward moves compared to similar backward or lateral moves. (All pieces the formula was based on were 8-fold symmetric, and thus averaged out such effects.) Color-boundedness might also play an important role, distributing the piece value over a base value nd a bonus, where the bonus would very quickly drop to a negligible value if you do not posses one piece of every 'color' class.

Originally, I put in this feature to handle the Chinese pieces, Elephant and Horse. They are 'lame' leapers, meaning their move really goes in two steps, over an intermediate square, but they are not allowed to terminate the move (and end up) on this intermediate square. They can be blocked there, however. So the Chinese Elephant is defined in Fairy-Max as a double leaper, with both leaps having the same step vector (e.g. (1,1), so it is not a bent double leaper). The first step has no move rights at all, however (neither capture, nor non-capture) and is specified as 'slider type', meaning the move can continue if the target square was empty. The next step is then made according to the secondary move description, which now has both capture and non-capture rights, and is leaper type (meaning it cannot be continued even if the target square was empty). So the move stops there.

Similarly, the Horse is a bent double leaper, with no rights after its first leap other than to continue with the second leap. To implement the bend, the secondary step vector now is different from the primary one (e.g. (1,0) and (1,1)). As Fairy-Max does not assume symmetry of any kind of the described pieces (to handle, say, the Shogi Generals), all 8 move directions of the Horse have to be enetered seperately in the description. This is cumbersome, but allows maximal flexibility in defining pieces.

The Hero could be described in the Fairy-Max system as a (2,0) Dababbah step with full rights (capt + non-capt) and continuation, with secondary (1,0) Wazir step with full rights but termination. This would take care of the 'jump 2' and 'jump 2 and step 1' moves, and would have to be supplemented by the other move in the same direction given as a (1,0) Wazir move with full rights and continuation plus a secondary (2,0) leap with full rights and termination. The slight disadvantage would be that, if both intervening squares are empty, the (3,0) move is now described in duplicate, and in the Fairy-Max search woud be attempted twice. But Fairy-Max is not very sensitive to such duplicate descriptions, as the retry of the move would usually give an immediate hash-table hit.

For a Bent Hero, you would have to describe all possible bend moves separately, like for the Horse. E.g. (1,0)+(2,0), (1,0)+(0,2), (1,0)+(-2,0) and (1,0)+(0,-2) for the 'step 1 and slide 2' moves starting in the (1,0) direction. Again cumbersome, but unavoidable if you want to retain the option of allowing only a subset of all possible bends (like the Horse only used the forward diagonal secondery steps).

Fairy-Max does not go beyond a secondary move description; if the secondary step has a continuation (i.e. is also defined as slider-like) it alternates back to the primary move description. This allows implementation of pieces like the Crooked Bishop. Normal sliders are implemented by making primary and secondary move description the same. For hoppers (e.g. Chinese Cannon, or Grasshopper) the primary and secondary move descriptions are used somewhat differently: they don't alternate step by step, but only when the piece hops over its platform. So they describe the moves before and after the hop. For a Cannon this would change the move ricghts from non-capture slider to capture-only slider, for the Grasshopper from rightless slider to full leaper.

It is true that the Amazon is not completely upward-compatible to the Lion, as the latter can make the move to the second square on diagonals and orthogonals as a jump. But it is hard to believe that that would be worth more than all distant slider moves together.

So I would estimate the Lion more as Queen + 2 Pawns. I will run some Capablanca matches where one side hashas Lion, and the other has Queen+Knight, to conclusively prove that Lion is weaker than Q+N.

This obviously only works for scores close enough to 50%; if Knight odds from the opening would score 85% (excess 35%), being two Knights ahead cannot produce a score of 120%. For material imbalance so big that the score gets outside the range 30-70% there no longer is a linear relation between imbalance and excess score, as the latter tails off to +/- 50%.

This makes it possible to predict scores (for games played from the early opening phase) from a set of piece values, simply adding the piece values for each side, and taking the difference. Conversely, by playing a large number of matches from opening positions with a material imbalance, you can derive a set of piece values that optimally predict the scores. For instance, on an 10x8 board with Capablanca pieces, a Pawn advantage typically translates to a 12% score advantage. Playing an unpaired Bishop against a Knight (i.e. deleting B+N for one side, and B+B for the other from the opening array) gives a 6% excess in fafour of the Bishop. Playing a paired B vs N (so deleting B on one side, and N on the other) gives an excess of 12% for the Bishop. Deleting B on one side and N+P for the other, the score becomes equal.

So it makes sense to assign a base value to a Bishop that is half a Pawn higher than that of a Knight, and give a bonus of another half Pawn for possession of the Bishop pair. (This unlike normal Chess: if you play unpaired B vs N there, it scores 5%, and the base values of B and N would be equal.)

Applying this method systematically to all pieces from Capablanca Chess, will give the following piece values that best explain all match results:
P=85
N=300
B=350 (pair bonus = 40)
R=475
A=875
C=900
Q=950

Note in particular how strong an Archbishop is in real play; the given value is based on the observation that A hbeats R+B and R+N+P, that A+P beats Q or C, and that even a pair of Archbishops plus a Pawn have no trouble in beating a pair of Chancellors.

Good luck to all.

It is a relatively minor change (and I am certain most have not read the rules!) that arose from some play testing I carried out.

The pawn can move from its original position either 1, 2 or 3 vacant squares forward.
If on its first move, the pawn stepped forward 1 square only or made a capture from its original position, it now has the option on its second move only, but not necessarily on the next turn, to slide forward 2 vacant squares towards the center of the board.
Subsequently or otherwise, it can move forward only 1 vacant square at a time.

Some examples (In Titan Chess): the white pawn at g3 can start g3-g6 or it can move g3-g5 then g5-g6, or g3-g4 followed by g4-g6, or move g3-h4 to capture enemy piece at h4 followed by h4-h6 next time it moves.

If you look at the original rules, notice that once the pawn moves 1 space or makes a capture from original position, it cannot make a double move on next move.

My reason for this change is to allow a side more dynamic pawn play. A side can for example choose a more defensive opening (moving the pawns initially only 1 space forward) and then at the right movement create a counterattack by sliding them up to the center.

Otherwise everything in the game remains the same -
In fact this scenario might only arise once in a game or not at all, but when it does you tend to wish this was the way it works.

Let me know if any objection or thoughts on this. I would quickly add these to all the rules for these games if not.

If there is even 1 objection from a player I would hold off until after this tournament to change for these games.

The results of the cricket were 304 total runs scored, which converts to 214 duodecimals.

As a result, we are going with scenario 3. In random scenario 3, alpha2 is match 1, alpha3 is match 2, alpha1 is match 3.

Charles Birds (vs Donut), Stealth (vs Carlos), Titans (vs George)
Carlos Falcon (vs Charles), Hole (vs George), Wormhole (vs. Donut)
George Altair (vs Carlos), JacksWitches (vs Donut), Rococo(vs Charles)
Donut Hammer (vs George), Korean (vs Charles), Rollerball (vs Carlos)

Joe Atlantean (vs Juan), Grand (vs Graeme), Lemurian (vs Jeju)
Graeme Circular (vs Joe), Modern Courier(vs Jeju), Save the Standard (vs Juan)
Jeju Eight Stone (vs Graeme), Racing (vs Juan), Wuss II (vs Joe)
Juan Bachelor (vs Jeju), Hostage (vs Joe), Switching (vs Graeme)

Early analysis of the matchups finds a few interesting tidbits.

Only Juan and Donut end up playing a game they cast a veto against. Donut on Jacks & Witches, Juan on Save the Standard 13x13.

Joe, on the other hand, cast no vetoes but did allude to a few games he was not keen to play…and drew one of them, Wuss II.

Juan and Jeju are drawn in a rematch of a game completed with a Jeju resignation 320 days ago.

If anyone has the talent and time to make the schedule into a chart of some sort, that’d be appreciated.

Carlos has offered to assign the games and get them started. Once he does that, game on. If you find any time goofs in the game settings, report them to Carlos and he should be able to restart the game.

Unless there’s a strong outcry against, I’d say…

(copied and pasted from 3rd courier tournament page, written by Fergus)

Time Controls
Game Courier has very versatile and sophisticated time controls, and these will be used to time all games in the tournament. Details on how time controls work can be found in the User's Guide. The same time controls will be used for each game. Here's what I propose to use:
Pace: 4 moves per week
Spare Time: 14 days
Grace Time: 24 hours
Extra Time: 8 hours
Bonus Time: 6 hours for moving within 24 hours
Tie-Breaking
If two players attain the same score, ties will be broken by the following methods in a topdown order:
· Buchholz / Solkoff method (Compares scores of all opponents defeated by tied players.)
· Sonneborn-Berger (Compares scores of all opponents defeated or tied with tied players.)
· Number of Wins (Wins count as 1, ties as nothing.)
· Most Blacks (Whoever has won more games as the second player wins the tie.)

I got your message but cannot send you one as you must give me permission. Also, your name does not show up in the specific CVwiki list of members. Is it possible you are a member of the general wiki group, but not a member specifically of the CVwiki? Click on the link David Howe just gave, and try to register.

Joe

However, I have no problems updating these pages, so if the way we're going so far is good for everyone else, it's fine with me. [And I figured Donut would get in somehow… ;-) ]

Joe

The Donut wants to post his veto votes, but doesn't have an approved account here.

So, I'm logged in and will let him type now:

jacks&witches

rococo

seeing as we are allowed to veto for any reason at all, i'll go for…

circular chess with crooked bishops and queen
eight stone
hammer chess
hostage chess
racing kings
rococo
save the standard 13x13
titan chess

The change of the Grayhawke is respected, appreciated and adopted.

(Knew that one or the other of you smart guys would find my goofs and clean them up…)…

…and now I'm off to figure out how to convert a cricket result to duodecimals and how the combined score between a bunch of cricketers could result with an A or B in the score…

There's 6 random scenarios:

• In random scenario 1, alpha1 is match 1, alpha2 is match 2, alpha3 is match 3
• In random scenario 2, alpha1 is match 1, alpha3 is match 2, alpha2 is match 3
• In random scenario 3, alpha2 is match 1, alpha3 is match 2, alpha1 is match 3
• In random scenario 4, alpha2 is match 1, alpha1 is match 2, alpha3 is match 3
• In random scenario 5, alpha3 is match 1, alpha1 is match 2, alpha2 is match 3
• In random scenario 6, alpha3 is match 1, alpha2 is match 2, alpha1 is match 3

and the combined run score is first converted to duodecimal.

Then

• If the units column is 0 or 1 scenario 1 applies
• If the units column is 2 or 3 scenario 2 applies
• If the units column is 4 or 5 scenario 3 applies
• If the units column is 6 or 7 scenario 4 applies
• If the units column is 8 or 9 scenario 5 applies
• If the units column is A or B scenario 6 applies

Cheers
Graeme

Each group has 4 players:

Player A Player B Player C Player D
A is the highest seed, D the lowest.

Player A has match 1 vs player B, match 2 vs player C, match 3 vs player
D
Player B has match 1 vs player C, match 2 vs player D, match 3 vs player
A
Player C has match 1 vs player D, match 2 vs player A, match 3 vs player
B
Player D has match 1 vs player A, match 2 vs player B, match 3 vs player
C

Each player brought 3 games…based on their alphabetical order, game
alpha1, alpha2 and alpha3.

In random scenario 1, alpha1 is match 1, alpha2 is match 2, alpha3 is
match 3

In random scenario 2, alpha 2 is match 1, alpha3 is match 2, alpha1 is
match 3.

In random scenario 3, alpha3 is match 1, alpha1 is match 2, alpha2 is
match 3.

All games will start at the same time and have generous time allotments.
They will start as soon as Carlosly possible from or after April 21st (if
no games are vetoed by 4 players).

Which random scenario is used will be based on the following cricket
match:

Only Twenty20 International Bangladesh v Pakistan at Karachi - Apr 20,
2008 (18:00 local, 13:00 GMT)

If the total number of runs scored (combined Bangladesh and Pakistan)
results in the numbers 1, 2 or 3 in the ones column, we go scenario 1.

If the number in the ones column is 4, 5 or 6, we go scenario 2.

If it's 7, 8 or 9, scenario 3.

If it is zero, we look at the number in the tens column.

If that too is zero, we look at the number in the hundreds column.

If that too is zero, then the match was called off and we look at the
total number of points scored in the last NBA game to finish on Sunday the
20th.

Cricket results can be found at cricinfo.com

Any questions??

I veto

Saving the Standard 13x13

Bachelor Chess

PotLuck2008 [all messages] [add response]
2008-04-14 juan rodriguez Verified as juan rodriguez None

Ok, here's comes a veto or three. First though, I didn't see a preset
for modern courier chess. Does it have one? Did i just miss it?

I'd agree to veto these:

Wormhole Chess
Titan Chess
Saving the Standard 13x13

Good luck all!

(re: vetoes, my 3 veto votes were done mostly to provide an example that there's no stigma in casting a veto vote - I truly want people to veto any game they don't want in the tournament for any reason - even though I expect games I nominated might make prime veto targets —-oh, and Joe, I love the hidden references in your post, but could only find 2…are there really 3?)

I cast one veto for each of the following:

Atlantean Barroom Shatranj

Rococo

Falcon Chess

The above posted by je ju at CV.org - Joe

Now, how does the 2nd round go?

During the 7 day veto period any player may veto any game for any reason whatsoever. If you feel it is a bad game, if you don't like the game, or even if you love the game, have played it a lot and just don't feel like playing it now. Using a veto is simply a manner of expressing a preference. If you prefer not to play a game, feel free to veto it.

If a game you named, or even invented, is vetoed, please don't take it as an insult. In fact, it may have been vetoed because others are afraid to play you in that game…which is a compliment in a way.

Reminder…Each player will play each game that they nominated ONE time.

They will play it against ONE other player in their pool. Which player they play it against will be determined randomly after the veto period.

They manner of randomly setting the matches will be described in a future post, and will involve the results of the following cricket match:

Only Twenty20 International Bangladesh v Pakistan at Karachi - Apr 20, 2008 (18:00 local, 13:00 GMT)

I think this is a great idea, and we're just beginning to use it. I'd love to see some more people get involved - maybe we need some advertising. Or at least some pictures.

Joe

I do feel, though, that there should be at least 2 admins to help ensure continuity in the face of life's ever-shifting sands.

This is particularly useful for determining what game elements are bounded vs unbounded (infinite).

Many Rules Chess:
http://www.chessvariants.org/other.dir/manyrules.html

91 and 1/2 Trillion Falcon Chess by George Duke:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSninety-oneanda

Perhaps other people can find other things. The IAGO Chess System I happened to put out provides an additional framework for managing thing, but doesn't have these. Anyhow, anyone have any other ideas?

I know the use of mutators could also play part, as would a shuffle, or even gating/drops. The basic idea is to have a theoretical game which is able to never be played with the same rules twice. This theoretical game, if studied, then would find common underlying strategies to what works across all forms of chess.

I see this so far:
1. Board size and shape. A board can theoretically be infinite in size. Because of this, it can theoretically take on an infinite number of shapes (shapes representing the number of spaces it has, and where they are located).
2. The number of players (and also number of teams).
3. Time control: Amount of time each player has to play.
4. Play to points in a chess tournament: Players can play to an infinite number of points.

Probably unbounded (no sure):

• Turn order and sequence of play. This is based off the way progression works. There may be a limit to how many times a player can move in a row, given a minimum number of pieces, which the victory conditions can always be met. In light of this, this may not be infinite.

Some that I am uncertain about:

• The number of unique pieces. Is there an infinite number of ways a piece can act on a chessboard?
• Number of pieces on a board and their mix. If a board is finite size, then this should mean there can only be so many piece combinations on a board, right?
• Reserve pool mix. It is theoretically possible that you can have an infinitely large reserve of pieces that can be dropped in from every turn, but I would argue there is the possibility for a board to get clogged up with so many pieces, that it isn't infinite. Even shuffling the reserve doesn't resolve.
• Adding new rule types. Are there really an unlimited number of different rule types that can be added to chess, that make it unlimited.

What I don't see as unlimited:

• Shuffles. Unless you have a theoretical unlimited number of pieces on an infinitely wide board, it doesn't look infinite to me.
• Piece names and look. This doesn't functionally change how a game is played.
• Board colors. Unless the rules governing pieces is governed by color of the board, this is irrelevant to how the game is played.
• Space shape. I would argue there is only a finite number of ways that spaces can be fit together that they would fit together. Now, the combination of these pieces definitely could potentially fit under the unlimited category.

Please reply with others and comment.

You can find the rules to Calvinball here (unofficial):
http://www.bartel.org/calvinball/

For the discussion of Calvinball Chess, I would to focus on the ONE permanent rule regarding Calvinball on that page:
Permanent Rule: You may not play the Calvinball the same way twice.

So, in light of this, I would like to make another suggestion to the objective of Chess of Tomorrow project. How about producing a framework that would enable a person to be able to NEVER play the chess the same way twice? If this were the case, what exactly would the framework need to be like. You can do an extreme version where it is done at start, or have it change on the fly.

So when doing Calvinball Chess, or the Chess of Tomorrow, it has one permanent rules. Person engaged in Calvinball Chess may never play chess the same way twice, with the exact set of rules. A softer version would be, that playing a different side would count as playing it different.

Give some thought to this a bit, when thinking the Chess of Tomorrow project. What Heraclitus could do is serve as a basis for the goal. Then change a person to a COMMUNITY of players, or ALL players of the game. To what extent is this possible, and how can the Chess of Tomorrow make this possible?

As I see it, that would end up being an X-Class game (Based of C-Class rules), which could become V-Class once people approve of it.

On this note, if IAGO Chess System is used, we are going to need to do more work, and cut the confusion a bit. I am starting to confuse myself, with the IAGO Chess game and its classes, and also there being the IAGO Chess System classification for games. This will definitely need to be cleared.

Replace the queen in the back row next to the king with a second king. Object is to eliminate both kings. You capture one and checkmate the second. You may be able to checkmate both kings perhaps also for the win.

Still looks like too much to me. I believe when you get like this, then players should be moving multiple pieces, Feudal style.