Comments by CharlesDaniel

My optional ninja pawn drop rule applies to  my 104 square variants: Birds
and Ninjas, and Insane Ninja chess. Any one of the rear 2 squares when
vacant is the gate . 
Sounds like designated space (d).

Same with Pick the Piece Big Chess but here any square on back rank is
designated space.

I am afraid that I have to agree with George Duke's well articulated POOR comment.  RN and BN too powerful on an 8x8 board with only 8 pawns to 10 pieces. Disagree with George only in that I believe Omega plays excellent compared to this shoddy little variant getting a bit too much publicity. Here s an improvement using the drop concept in this game: use Joyce's short range war machine/knight and elephant/knight compounds instead for a more balanced game.  
So Excellent for the whole drop concept (though I would prefer that the player pay the price of 1 move to bring in a piece), and Poor in piece selection. 
I understand the enthusiasm of previous commentators of bringing in new pieces via gating but why use a knight compound anyway: Just drop a real Elephant (modern type) and war machine/wazir and maybe 2 ninja pawns - thats a bit more subtlety than just going crazy with powerful knight compounds.

My suggestion may sound more radical ..

I suggest that for every pairing: e.g Player A vs B they play two games .
First Player A chooses ANY game (it can be his own), then Player B chooses
his. Player B shall play white (or have the option to play first) in player
A's game, and Player A plays white in Player B game. 
We can restrict it so that no player can choose to play the same game more
than twice for the whole tournament. Also, the rules of the particular game
chosen must be clear to the opponent. 
To me, this makes more sense because every player gets to play his/her own
game as well as opponents game. 
And there will be  a larger amount of game types being played, with the
added benefit that players can playtest their own games.

My condolences on Space War - I just looked at it and it seems very
interesting. 
 
Regarding your garage - I sort of agree with you but your idea allows
people to play around with suspected 'bad' games and ignoring the
thousands of 'not sure' games out there.  Assuming you get a group of
people to playtest(that may not happen..), it seems the time is best
spending on games that no one is quite sure about. So more like a center
for test driving new cars or never before driven cars , or exotic cars ..
) 
And there is no need in removing it from chessvariants is there?



Regarding comments on games, there are different directions this site can
go. Like Youtube which is essentially (in my opinion) a complete spam site
where everyone just flames the other videos - almost no constructive
criticism. I feel sorry for some of the real performance artists on
youtube - they get the worst comments of all. 
Or like a writing workshop (e.g. critters.org) where members try to read
each the other's work and ideally give some constructive criticism. Being
a member there - it does work for the most part.  

Or maybe stay the same - a  little bit of both ..) 




Anyway maybe my point being maybe Joes Garage can do more test drives of
new cars or never before driven cars as well . Or give some results of
already driven cars ..)

There is one more game that I'm working on, having done more playtesting on this than any other, called Titan Chess with a 12x12 board - should have it posted by next week. That would probably be my 3rd game.

I would recommend Toulousain Chess as well but my 3 choices are up .

Yes, the Ninja Guard and Ninja Warrior are identical to elephant/war machine except for the jump over capturing mechanism and double capture.

The Gryphon is quite an interesting piece and perhaps even more so when it is vulnerable which is why I limited its moves.
The Anti_gryphon is also a limited form of the Aanca.

Consider emailing all chessvariant members with an invitation to join the
tournament.  They may be many who have registered emails with this site
but are quite inactive.

And -- is anyone going to bring orthodox (FIDE) chess into this
tournament?!

And I mean this is a poor joke at that! 
I don't think this should be at this site unless it is categorized as a joke and a poor one at that. 
This is like one of the numerous Wikipedia joke/bogus entries and far less   interesting to boot.

I will have no problem veto a  game, but I need to read up on the rules
first - I am not too familiar with a lot of the games here .
I dont see anything I immediately dislike as of now. .

>>proposal to completely solve the problem of draws in
chess.>>
There is no problem of draws in chess. You need to be more specific. 

Libraries of opening theory analysis does imply that the  first 15 moves may be the same for many games - the logical result of cautious 
players very knowledgeable of  opening theory not willing to take too many risks.

 Stalemate =draw does not address the above 'problem'. 

Additionally, the proposal throws out every beautiful endgame study so I think being 'respectful' is sort of stretching it. 

Consider , creating  an actual chess variant (opening theory would have to start from scratch)  or perhaps  a game with changing parameters that make an accumulation of opening theory impossible.

I veto 

Saving the Standard 13x13

Bachelor Chess

Hi Rich, 

While I agree with some of what you say, I dont think chess has a draw
issue at all. I took a quick look at all the chess games I played when I
was active  - very few draws. This seems to happen more in the GM level -
the grandmaster draw (less than 20 moves) could easily be banned.  

And many well contested games that end in draws at proper completeion are
actually quite interesting - I say just get rid of the draw offer for
major  tournaments/matches. 
Getting rid of Stalemate, 3 move repetition seems like a major step
backwards so I would nt call them patches - more like deleting essential
components. 

I am probably in the minority here defending orthodox chess but its
probably because I am more interested in chess-like variants than most,
and I was not too long ago a chess  enthusiast.

There are no new pieces, no new board - nothing .

Some of the posters here still dont realize that the 60% draw will never be a problem for the strong to average chess player. In fact it wont be a problem with super GMs either if they didn't have to play each other all the time! The 'fix' to get a winner is simple - play a 24 game chess match - a winner will be determined.

Rich Hutnik  Posted:
----------------------------------
Well, the highest level of chess
represents chess played at an optimal level, right? If it is drawing at
that level,
what impact does it have on the game? 

----------------------------------
Drawing at that level simply demonstrates that both opponents are almost
equally skilled.  
If a win is desired then  it is the scoring that needs to be changed (even
though I disagree on that too) . For example consider giving a draw less
than 1/2 point . or scoring for the different types of draws. 

However, stalemate is one of the greatest 'features' in chess. Feature
well utilized:  even recently in a game between two GMs one player on his
way to a loss played a tricky move which if not replied correctly would
have led to stalemate. 
I like to give the boxing analogy of a knockout to checkmate. Most boxing
matches between equally skilled opponents are actually draws - the scoring
is so subjective you might as well call it that .  Now if you want a
decisive result between two players. How about this: in the event of a
draw - the time control is changed to say something like 5min/12second
increment  and they play until someone wins. Changes to scoring and
tournament rules can be adjusted to produce a winner in all cases  if
desired.

Have you taken a look at Modern Shatranj? I believe it has all the rules
you would like implemented. Perhaps a modified version of that game may be
a good starting point .

What do you think about the second row of ninja pawns in Titan Chess?
From considerable testing , this is the most balanced 12x12 I have played.
A lot of tactical play but also room for a great deal of strategy.

Birds and Ninjas

The game is Birds and Ninjas. the ninja guards are normal - they DO NOT HAVE leaping camel move. All std rules EXCEPT one option: each side can drop 4 ninja pawns as per drop rule spec.

Removing one row seems interesting. 

But I must object to your 'simplification'. You attempt to complicate the moves of the pawn moves. Yet, how do  explain that even 6 year old children can grasp the standard chess rules quite easily. 

How hard is it to grasp that a pawn can reach the center of the board in one move, and a pawn that it bypasses can capture it? 


Except for stalemate, capturing the king only benefits novices and very BAD players. I dont see how this benefits the game in general. (note this is for 2 player std chess-like game not for other variants) 


No serious chess player would take this variant seriously especially since it destroys the game it attempts to 'improve'. 

I suggest emphasizing the 7 rows more so as to make this a real chess variant .., keep 1 step pawn movement, no castling, promotion rules but revert back to std chess checkmate stalemate /draw rules.

As anyone who reads the description of Pick the Big Piece can ascertain, both sides agree on what pieces they choose to play with and what should be dropped. It is suggested that both sides use the 'same armies'. The pieces in the main presets have all been a mix of my pieces and 'open source' pieces. 
The new preset with 1 Falcon to be dropped for each side was made with understanding that this experimental preset was allowed by the patent owner for the benefit of others  as per comment regarding the use of bison (a piece clearly made long before the patent!). 



It should be quite clear to anyone that this game does NOT depend on this preset. I have absolutely no interest in the Falcon piece nor its patent - only in 'open source' chess pieces. 
I only hope that the verbiage in patent does not include pieces like Zebra and camel compounds. 

A simple request to remove the preset would suffice, which is what I shall do.