Comments by jean-louiscazaux

Terachess was designed in 2008 and appeared soon after on Jocly. But it was in April 2020 that I have made more major changes and in order to keep a trace of the first version, I made a new page called Terachess II. So you are right.

In case it is useful, Gigachess had a similar evolution except that it was first designed in 2001. Gigachess II was completed in April 2020 too.

I like it too. Maybe I would consider switching Cannons and Vaos. (To avoid a threat on a11 and n11).

I also like the fast castling which seems well suited for these large CV.

Speaking of taste, I'm OK with these graphics, they remind me of those of Dobutsu Shogi made by Madoka Kitao (this is a game that is missing on the CVP by the way). Well, the Horse, Ox and Index (why such a name?) are not fantastic in my opinion. But, it's the author's choice.

On the text, I would recommend to avoid the use of he or she (e.g. she for the Raven) and use a neutral "it".

It looks an interesting game, thanks to Daniel for the GC.

Isn't possible to have a board with different color for the bull's eye?

My experience with Vaos is to avoid putting them on a 2nd row, and also avoid a non-central place on the 3rd row from where they can capture too early. I would put them on h3/i3 for example, or on the 4th row.

Your modified Elephant and Queen are fine in my opinion. I was just saying that they are not historical as no historical chess, nowhere, is playing them. As you said that you named your game Historia ^Sako because of these 2 pieces I was just commenting that the name of this game is maybe not fitting well.

I was looking for definitions of other castlings. This page is excellent.

That is true.

I'm smiling every time I read that a game is designed to improve chess. Good luck.

However, I think this game looks interesting. I see it as a variant of Sit-Tu-Yin, Burmese chess, and that is rather rare, so quite interesting.

It is written "Historia Ŝako come from Esperanto language means Historical Chess. It received this name because it tracks movements of bishop/elephant and queen, movements that are characteristic of history of both western and eastern variants." The fact is the proposed elephant and queen are not historical. So, I my opinion, the name of this game is not well chosen.

Thanks for answering. It's a nice design. About the large distance between the front rows on a very large board, I agree with you. You say "An alternative would be to not completely pack the armies in the initial setup, but starting them in a more advanced position in a more vacuous setup." That's funny because this is exactly what I was thinking about since yesterday evening :=)

Don't overreact. Many variants see the light of day and are just re-inventing old ones, I have plenty of examples of 4-player chess, circular chess, hexagonal chess, 3-player chess, decimal chess with 3:1 hoppers (camels), etc. which already existed.

In the case of Conquer, I do not know another variant which is exactly identical. So, yes it may have its raison d'être. I just said that Conquer is only slightly different than several other variants where "The goal of the game is to conquer the opponent's army and to add it to your own army", your motto. Are you aware of them? If yes, you could have mentioned them. If no, now you know, Pritchard's book is available online.

I agree with you HG. The rule is clear and good. It would be nice if on computer play it would be possible to mark the Bishops as you suggest for woodware play.

Why this title A A Royal and His Pet, with 2 A? A typo?

I am not an editor but I would like to make some comments. Having a feedback on the 27, and complaining the 28, without answering the request, that it is too long to come is not fair.

Coming on a website where people love chess variants to say "I have created this game because I don't like most of the chess variants. They only add exotic pieces with crazy moves, and the games are too complex, while lacking in strategy." is not friendly. If you don't like most chess variants you don't need to lose your time here.

Your comment is very subjective. Exotic is not problem, exotic from which point of view? Everyone is exotic to someone else. Crazy, well, not sure that your proposal is less crazy than many other. Same for complex, there are many variants less complex than yours, and by the way, complex is not a problem for those who loves complexity. Lacking in strategy: how do you know (if you know what strategy is)?

If I was an editor, I would not publish your game with such an introduction, there are enough forums on the web where narrow-mind exclusive comments against chess variants can be made.

I'm playing this interesting variant. Some remarks:

1) The presentation line says "9x9 variant with extra Queen and Bishops conversion rule". >> it should be corrected to 9x8 as it is not a 9x9 as originally designed.

2) As 9x8 its originality is weak too. In Pritchard's one can find two preceding CV, also briefly addressed in this website. Ultrachess attributed to D.Trouillon, early 1970s with the same setup, where it is possible to transpose B and N once. Also Active Chess (G.Kuzmichov, 1989) for which, apparently, some research had been done to find the best setup. Here the extra Queen is put on i- or j- file. Gollon also explored this game, preferring RBNQKQBNR baseline.

Another option to change the square color of one Bishop would have been the solution adopted in Not-Particularly-New Chess by Peter Aronson (2001): having that piece first moving as N (non capturing) and as B on subsequent moves. 

This page is terrible. It would need a complete editing. Many characters (bad coding?) such as "It’s", a big black section with "External image links detected", almost all images with a stamp "photo bucket" on them. It's impossible to read the rules. Hope someone will be able to clean this.

I am not an editor but I think you could improve that page a bit.

The main feature in your game seems to be the capture mode and I confess that I don't understand it at all: "They capture even better: by dissecting — going through all opponent's pieces which are not on edges of their movement (behind the pieces are being captured by dissection must be at least one free space)" .

I believe that you know what you are talking about, but as a reader who never tried your game, I don't. "Even better" than what? What are "the edges" of a movement? Maybe you could illustrate with a diagram, and also revise the text to make it more - fluid.

The text at the beginning, "You’ll probably tell that it’s plagiarism beacause it’s hybrid of chess and draughts, but have you seen it with standard board, many captured pieces per turn, standard pieces and (probably) able to be on Lichess (free libre chess site with millions of players)? I did it for Lichess, but they don’t need it now (for 1 year minimally). I write it there."

This text has few typos, a strange grammar, and I wonder what it brings for understanding of the rules. At best it should be moved in the Notes section at the end of the page.

This is my advice.

Indeed

I have several of my games on Jocly, no 0! Shako, Wild Tamerlane, Metamachy, Gigachess, Terachess, Rollerball.

Interesting. I understand the idea. However several moves do not appear as "natural" for me. That notion of "naturally" is certainly very subjective and depends on who considers it.

The notation is not clear for me. I would recommend a void diagram on which each cell is identified with its coordinates.

The Rook is OK for me.

The Bishop is not. I am surprised to see the cells it may reach. Moreover I am not sure to understand which path it follows to reach these cells. I recommend to show the paths as well on the diagram.

The Knight is partly strange for me. OK for the 3 cells which are not on Rook's paths, they look natural for a Knight-equivalent. For the 6 others, they are like Dabbaba-equivalent. But, why not defining the Knight as such. OK.

I have a problem with the Bishop. As the matter of fact, this lies in how you define a diagonal for a triangle. That would deserve an explanation. You speak of diagonal but not all readers will catch it. Me, I confess I don't.

Don't take bad this feedback. Again, it's interesting.

Please add links as well. For example you talk about Avery 4221 and Avery's web site. I don't know what you are talking about, please add a link to this web site.

is there anything I should do now for this page?

@Paul Newton: to make a link to that piececlopedia page is easy. Copy the link. Then edit your page. Toggle the "source" button of the section where is your text to get out from html. Then you will activate the link button. Select your text (here "Kangaroo"), activate the link button and paste the link you memorised there.

yes dozenal is a neologism, but I wish to keep it here as I have used it before in several of my variants presented in CVP too. We even have a tag called dozenal. OK for the other changes made by Fergus, thanks.

Thanks to Bn for the informations I didn't have on the Pashtuns. I didn't know where Eric had found these names. I have added these credits.

Few remarks:

• why using a Bishop in the diagrams and a different piece in the text explaining the General?

• the string "rn1ke1nrpppebppp3pp22PP3PPPEBPPPRN1KE1NR" should not appear in this page I think.

• why there is some part of a ZoG's source file inside the Rules section? Is that a rule?

• "the similar Alibaba (Betza notation AD) was used in India prior to the year 850" No, this is wrong. Murray was clear on this. You can check on his History of Chess, 1913, p59. In ancient India, 3 sorts of Elephants have been reported: A (like in shatranj), FfW (like the Silver in modern shogi) and D (by al Adli). No AD, never. So calling this piece an "Indian" Elephant is maybe not the best name.

1972 in the Reformed Courier-Spiel page was a error. 1971 was meant and I have corrected it.

The date of invention of this game is confusing. Pritchard, who seemed in relationship with Byway, had probably the correct date with 1971.

The date of 1992 mentioned by Begnis in his page, and also in my own French book "L'Odyssée des jeux d'échecs" taken as reference by Begnis, is the date at which Modern Courier Chess seems to appear in Variant Chess magazine.

In http://www.mayhematics.com/v/vol5/vc37.pdf, Byway says "Some two decades passed before extended experiments at Powdermill chess club resulted in the present rules". The 1971's moves were different from the one, definitive, of 1992.

Me too with Safari, similar messages, "load cannot follow more than 20 directions"

Me too, for 2 days

Alfonso X was king of Castile from 1252 to 1284. The sentence saying he was king in the 1300s should be corrected.

I didn't know I could upload on that page. Good. 

(I remove the photo having got a very bad private comment about this by an editor. I just wanted to help, forget it)

"that is allows us to spotlight a game for its quality and not just for its popularity or historic value."

OK but who is "us", what is the process to judge the quality? I fear the boundaries are more than vague here.

It is maybe a semantic question. What do you mean by "featured" exactly? Is that "having distinctive aspects", "having something special" which is rather neutral, or is that bearing some positive appreciation, meaning that this game is better than others?

There are also 2 other lists which translate the popularity of the different CVs. One based on the number of games played on Game Courier:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/listgames.php

One based on the numbers of "like" received by a game:

https://www.chessvariants.com/index/favorites.php

Both lists have to be taken with caution as there are by no means fully objective, anyway it gives some ideas. And maybe there are better and less arbitrary recognitions.

@Fergus, HG, Greg

I'm volunteer to write the page for Obento Chess, a game created by Eric Silverman with my cooperation. I have sent you an e-mail about this with a proposal. Please check it out and answer me. Thank you.

what is the meaning of a featured game?

You are right thank you. Indeed I was confused.

This game looks quite original. Very interesting. I came on this page owing to the ID made by HG. However this page and this game would deserve a small editing. How it is now, the presentation is just terrible, very difficult to read. Too bad. Could that be fixed? It doesn't seem difficult to do.

We've tried to update and clear out the very complex history of shogi and its large variants in a Word of Chess (McFarland, 2017). We were (strongly) helped by Erwann Le Pelleter, speaker of Japanese, who had access to several historical sources in this language.

Dai shogi is first mentioned in the Taiki, a diary made between 1135-1155. The first details on rules are given in the Nichureki, a text compiled in 1210-1221 but containing some parts that might be older. The Nichureki contains a description of a small shogi (that we call Heian Shogi) on 8x8 or 9x8 or 9x9, and THIS Dai Shogi on 13x13 that we call Heian Dai Shogi. The description of the moves of the pieces is short. For the Flying Dragon (Hiryu) it simply says "it flies in the four diagonal", if the translation is correct. Indeed, I agree that it is not enough to affirm that this move was the move of the modern Bishop. As HG remarks, it could also be the move of the piece with the same name at Dai Shogi (on 15x15). But it might be something different too as the indications for several other pieces, Copper General, Iron General, Side Mover, seem to describes different moves than the ones later known for Dai Shogi.

The Futsu shodoshu, a prayer anthology published around 1300 also evokes a Sho Shogi (sho=small) and a Dai Shogi, with a Flying Chariot (Hisha) for the 1st time in all shogi history. This Hisha was maybe playing like the Rook. Contrary to what many authors have said by copying each other, this text had no indication on the board size nor the total number of pieces.

The 15x15 form (we call it Dai Shogi) would have been presented in the Shogi Shushu no Zu, a book from 1443 now lost but which is known from copied passages in later historical books, the earliest being the Shogi Zu from 1591. Dai dai shogi, Maka dai dai shogi and Tai shogi were also in the Shogi Zu, and maybe, they were also known in 1443.

Chu shogi, on 12x12 is first mentioned in the mid 14th c. and appears several times in the 15th c.

It's a long story. But to make it short you can take 2012 when it has been revealed.

It s hot!

To my opinion it is interesting to have a tag related to board size. But those tags should be rationalised. Either 12x12 or Dozenal but not both. Also their form to be consistent. We have "board: 10x8" and "12x12".

Thank you

@HG: maybe not a useful info for you: I can access to some games by this site, below the example for Gigachess. On my Mac it works only on Firefox, not on Safari.

https://mi-g.github.io/jocly/examples/browser/control.html?game=giga-chess

@HG: I had it right yesterday, but today while making the other corrections I have edited the page. The ID is in the Notes section. At one moment I did toggle the Source button of this section to see something, and just that lose the HTML needed for the ID. This is a pain.

Now, it is corrected.

@Kevin: no, not yours.

We have a tag for "Dozenal" and a tag for "12x12Board". Both are addressing exactly the same thing. May an editor clean one of them?

It has been brought to my attention that the name of the author of this game is not correct. The full name is Gabriel Vicente Maura. From the examination of several sources, it appears that Gabriel is the first name and Vicente Maura is the family name. As it is usual in hispanic mode, Vicente is the father's name and Maura is the mother's name. Vicente also being an usual first name, a confusion has arisen.

In his Spanish book "Evolucion del ajedrez, 40 siglos" (Madrid, 1980), the prologue mentions "esta obra de Gabriel Vicente Maura", then simply "este libro de Vicente Maura", "el labor de Vicente Maura". In the acknowledgements, the author thanks his son, Carlos Gabriel Vicente Vega. He is also named his son as Carlos Vicente Vega at several instances in the book. On p212, the author mentions his niece, Marissel Velazquez Vicente.

From all this, it is certain that Vicente is not the second given name of the author, but his main last name, the one inherited from his father. The inventor of Modern Chess is Gabriel VICENTE MAURA, Mr. VICENTE.

I would suggest that you update the page with these elements, if you have the rights to edit it. Nice finding that should be kept for memory here.

For my part, I like the FA. I am sensitive to the consistency of a piece. The FA is a pure diagonal piece. It is different enough from the Bishop, especially in the center of the board where it may leap to threaten enemy pieces. A nice pattern is not necessarily a nice piece to play with, this is why I prefer it to WA or Omega's WAD. Of course this matter is highly subjective.

@Aurelian. I had tried this! It doesn't know you. So far :=). If you enter and say you are the new president of the U.S.A., I'm sure it will tell me that you are the new president of the U.S.A.

I don't think it's ready to be published. The language should be seriously revised. Many things have to be improved. What is Lichess? At least, it should be addressed by an external link. Who is Thibault? I know some Thibaults, some are friends of mine, but I don't believe they never heard about this.

@Georgi: I have also used the RNK and BNK here: https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/very-heavy-chess

In my opinion Zillions is completely out when estimating the value of the Cannon, and other hoppers.It gives the Cannon just a bit lower than the Rook, the Crocodile/Vao than the Bishop, and the Sorceress/Leo than the Queen. Some interesting numbers at the start of standard chess set on 8x8, if one Rook is successively replaced by a Cannon (XQ type), a Po (Korean cannon from janggi, hops to both move and capture) and a Faro (Argentinian hopper, hops to move and captures as a Rook):

Rook: 8630

Cannon: 8385

Po: 1930

Faro: 2104

Just trying

This is magic! Thanks HG!

Thank you HG. Don't take it bad. It is difficult to discuss as we would do f2f without being apparently aggressive, which I'm really not.

I do agree with your point on Betza's naming. But as a principle i think that if an editor modifies the page of someone else, it should be said that this modification is done by the editor and not by the author of the variant, just to let the reader knows of what is due to whom.

If you just write a remark that Betza did not name these pieces and the diagram call them by their usual names, it will be perfect I think.

Note that the NLJ(=NCZ) is not a Bison (which is CZ) but a Buffalo.

I had described this 16x16 game in my very first written book (Guide des échecs exotiques et insolites) published in 2000, and I had then called the KA a Prince-Elephant. I don't know any other use of this piece.

I'm feeling stupid. This discussion with tens of messages from Fergus, HG, etc. is related to what?

It is linked to Diagram Designer page but I don't understand what it is for. I see no change on that page. Can it be explained?

I do feel my question is stupid but I really don't understand what you are talking about.

Beside this, how do you do to embedd images of diagrams in your comments? Is there a trick?

Thank you.

Nice page and nice diagram

@Jörgen: I don't if there is a need or not but I like your proposed words. I didn't know that femto- and atto- prefixes are from Danish, nice to learn.

For 13, I think trezenal would be better. I've found it is used by people using base-13 computation. https://trezenal.fandom.com/wiki/Trezenal_Wiki

The Prince may make a double step forward at its first move, if the intervening and destination squares are empty (like the Pawn).

I have just corrected the Interactive Diagram to implement this rule which was missing.

Happy new year

To HG: Sorry to insist, I had no answer/reaction.

I think that it is not correct to change the name of the pieces of someone else's game, even for an editor.

Here Dog/Jolly Jumper/War Elephant have not been given by Betza.

If you don't want to remove those names in this page, you should at least insert a comment explaining for the readers who has named the pieces as such.

Thx

I had already mentioned that: the Owl doesn't fit well with the SVG set. The strokes are too thin. And the design is not very nice. Not in harmony with the rest.

Mammoth, Sabretooth are nice. Scorpion is nice too, maybe just a bit too big.

@HG: your answer is very honest but I think it is not good that you insert names for these pieces that were not explicitly given by the author of this game (Betza) nor they correspond to any previous usage. The reason you give (finding a word starting with the same letter than the one used in an ASCII diagram that has now disappeared) is too weak. I suggest that you return FD instead of Dog, NCZ instead of Jolly Jumper and KA instead of War Elephant. Maybe a note could precise that FD is aka Kirin, NCZ is aka Buffalo.

I don't know where you see the default as Alfaerie-SVG. What I see on this page when I open it is the Set as Abstract 1: Compound & Misc.

I found a KA in "Chess on a Really Big Board" https://www.chessvariants.com/d.betza/chessvar/16x16.html

Is there any others?

The text on this page says: "here is an ugly ASCII diagram of the setup" And what follows is an Interactive Diagram probably made by HGM!

The text could be corrected.

This diagram names the pieces as Dog (for FD), War Elephant (for KA), Jolly Jumper (for NCZ) but the text in the page composed by Betza is not mentioning those names. Who has chosen these names? Is it Betza or HGM?

Why only the number of columns can be entered and not the number of rows?

Do anyone know if a piece playing as King and Alfil (KA=WFA) has been ever used in chess variants?

As far for the King-Dabbaba (KD), I only know the use by Clément Begnis for Reformed Courier-Spiel who called it a "Champion". Do you know another use of the KD?

@Daniel: not to my knowledge.

@Greg: thanks, I confirm not seeing anything abnormal now

Aren't X and Y confusing in some cases? For example what is NX? Is it (4,2) (as DY) or (5,1)?

Or is it a convention to remove all ambiguities?

Hi there. Yesterday it was Christmas and as a gift the page presenting Tamerlane II, one of my games, has been removed. By accident I believe. Now it's a 404.

Today, it's my birthday. As a present I would be very glad if one editor will be kind enough to restore this page. I'm not responsible for its removal, it is not fair that it stays like that. I know editors are busy with a conversation on svg, png pieces for which I don't get really the importance, but for me it matters that the page which was presenting my game is back!

Thank you so much and happy birthday to me :=)

@Fergus: For me, the 3rd one is nicer. The contours of pieces are sharper and thinner.

(Seen on Mac, both with Safari and Firefox, no difference)

@Fergus: are speaking to me? Or Ben?

I don't know, guys I don't understand what you are doing. I don't know what editorial work was needed. I just remember the page for Tamerlane II was old and needed to be updated. I did it several months ago and we had agreed that the solution was to have a new page, the old one was getting 404 and an instruction to redirect to the new one.

But now both are getting 404 and without seeing them I don't remember which one was the old and which was the updated.

Could you get back as it was 2 days ago?

Thank you

@Greg: yes it looks ok, even with Safari, for the image you put into the comment section. The one in the main page is still the same, with the knight part blurred.