Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Mike, sounds interesting.  Care to name this variant?  I think I'll make a
zrf and try it out.  I think I'll also experiment with some similar games
putting all of the pawns on the third rank and dropping the pawn-2 and
en-passant rules.

H. E. Bird invented a precursor to Capa Chess, the difference being the new
pieces next to the King & Queen.

The page on Bird's Chess is
http://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/bird.html

Capablanca's Chess design analysis
# squares: 80
# piece types: 8
Piece-type density: 10%
Initial piece density: 50%
Long diagonal: a1-h8
Est. piece values: P1, K2, N3, B3, R5, A7, C8, Q9
Power density: 1.40
Exchange Gradient: 0.469 (1 - G = 0.531)
Ave. Game Length Projected: M = 3.5T/P(1-G) = (3.5*8)/(1.4*(0.531))
                                 =    38  Moves
Features: Includes all three two-fold R-N-B compounds, low G means very  
          good exchange potential
Comment: Around 80 years now since the Grandmaster's advocacy of larger 
         board to confront draw problem, Capablanca's Chess 
         practically mimics Carrera's idea from about 400 years ago.

Michael Howe: Larry Smith in 21-3-04 Game Design comment: 'The advantage
in the exchange: No matter the number of the various pieces, a game might
have a significant difference between the weakest and the strongest. This
allows for the potential of advantage in the game, even if the exchanges
are equal. Of course this value would be quite difficult to quantify and
would vary from one game to the next, being dependent upon field and
goal.'
Exchange Gradient now quantifies this, and used for Moves, it closely
predicts game lengths, looking at Courier games and elsewhere.  I
repeatedly called attention to Mark Thompson's article 'Defining
Abstract'(Depth, Clarity, Drama) until someone took note. Now I call
attention to Smith's Exchange Gradient as useful predictor. Here
Capablanca's Chess should show longer games systematically than Orthodox,
its low EG not overcoming higher board size.

There is a new program Smirf (still beta) playing not only 8x8 classic
chess and Fischer Random Chess but also 10x8 Chess variants based on the
Capablanca piece set. It supports also Janus chess and the Capablanca
Random Chess (or FullChess) variant proposed by myself since several
months:

CAPABLANCA RANDOM CHESS (2004-Nov-26) Proposal 

This definition of CRC should cover the following goals:

a) creating an interesting drosophila for chess programmers 
b) using Capablancas 10x8 Chess board geometry 
c) using Capablancas piece set (incl. archbishop and chancellor) 
d) applying rules aligned to Fischer Random Chess 
e) avoiding conflicts to any claimed patents 

The CRC rules are: 

a) creating a starting position (one of 48.000): 
 1) the bishops have to be placed upon different colored
  squares; same rule applies to the implicite bishop pieces:
  queen and archbishop (aligned to FRC)
 2) the king always has to be placed somewhere between the 
  rooks to enable castlings (aligned to FRC)
 3) use only such positions without unprotected pawns (Chess)

b) describing a method of generating starting positions on 
   free squares by using a dice or random number generator: 
 1) select queen or the archbishop to be placed first (2x)
 2) place the selected 1st piece upon a bright square (5x)
 3) place the selected 2nd piece upon a dark square (5x)
 4) one bishop has to be placed upon a bright square (4x) 
 5) one bishop has to be placed upon a dark square (4x) 
 6) one chancellor has to be placed upon a free square (6x) 
 7) one knight has to be placed upon a free square (5x) 
 8) one knight has to be placed upon a free square (4x)/2 
 9) set the king upon the center of three free squares left
11) set the rooks upon the both last free squares left 
12) this establishes White's first row, the Black side 
    has to be built up symmetrically to this 
13) place ten pawns similar to traditional chess in a row 
14) skip this position if it has unprotected pawns or not
    at least three positions in line 1 differently filled
    compared to Gothic Chess, this finally gives about
    21.259 distinct starting arrays.
   
c) nature of (asymmetric Fischer-) castlings:
 1) castlings are (like in traditional chess) only valid
  if neither the affected king or rook has been moved, or
  there would be a need to jump over any third piece, or
  the king would be in chess somewhere from his starting
  position to his target field (both included). Therefore
  all squares between king and its target square (included) 
  have to be free from third pieces, same applies to the
  way the rook has to go to its target square.
 2) the alpha-castling (O-O-O, White's left side):
  like in FRC the king will be placed two rows distant
  from the border (here c-file) and the rook at the next 
  inner neighboured square.
 3) the omega-castling (O-O, White's right side):
  like in FRC the king will be placed one row distant
  from the border (here i-file) and the rook at the next 
  inner neighboured square.

d) performing castlings:
 within a GUI try to move the king upon the related rook
 or at least two squares into that direction; manually:
 1) move the king outside of the board
 2) move the rook to its end position (if need to)
 3) move the king to his end position

e) extended FEN encoding:
 1) the extended FRC-FEN could be used as a base
 2) 'a'/'A' are used to identify archbishops
 3) 'c'/'C' are used to identify chancellors
 4) '9' is used to mark nine empty fields
 5) '0' is used to mark ten empty fields
 6) if a castling enabled rook is not the most outer one
  at that side, the letter of his file has to be placed
  immediately following his castling marker symbol, where
  'q'/'Q' are used for the alpha-, 'k'/'K' for omega-side.
 
f) engine notation rules for castling moves:
 According to UCI convention the castling moves should be
 written by using both coordinates (source and target field)
 of the involved king. But there are castlings, where the 
 king does only one or none simple step. In that cases the 
 castling should be distinguishable by appending a 'k', like
 already practized in promotion moves to make them unique.
 Overmore an engine should accept O-O or O-O-O (no zeroes),
 but only use them, when the GUI would demand for such a
 less precise notation.

However give my best best best auguries for your proposal, that surely
you've explained in more complete and exhausting way than how much I
wanted to make (to only transmit an idea, the same one that you have
already had :-), but that many seem not had spoken up to now, in spite of
the lot of number of chess variants).
This isn't the first time that i crossover with your ideas, and i've
talked with you about all possible pawns structres with same results with
same resulting number (do you rememerber? after that I haven't no more
working about calculating the exact number of all possible chess
positions
because I'm not a serious one-question-at-time solver, in fact I
preferred
work on my personal 'classical chess opening book'...).
However a little difference in my proposal were on the possibility to
incluce in the randomize also the 'Archbishop or Chancellor' chosen, so
to include in the random possibilities the well-known/well-playable Janus
Chess variant (pratically Capablanca Chess with 2 Archbishops instead of
Archbishop+Chancellor). I also propose to ponder the random possibilities
in the chosen of disposition of the pieces, in the randomize process. In
fact as Ed Trice says that his disposition is more well-playable than the
original Carrera/Capablanca disposition, and as Anand says that some
dispositions in Fischer Random Chess are bad-playable, we can start to
ponder the dispositions do it's more probable in the random-chosen a
disposition like the Gothic Chess or Janus Chess or Grotesque Chess,
instead of a disposition with more unprotected pawns (not well-playable
as
Ed Trice says).
Such new specialty could very well be Wild 30 between
the 'Wild' Chess Variants of ICC (the Internet Chess Club)
(http://www.chessclub.com/helpcenter/tips/wild.html), as perhaps Random
Thematic Chess, another chess variant that I've proposed in another
discussion
(http://www.chessninja.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=000674),
both to obtain the same result to diminish the advantage of the theorical
preparation (not being able to choose the opening from a personal
mnemonic
repertory, like Bobby Fischer says).
My best regards, Reinhard
I will follow you
Giulio

Hi! So see me astonished, I have not thought on such a congruency. If you
would have inspected my homsite www.chessbox.de, you would have detected
that proposal much earlier. But I think, that it should be a better place
here to introduce and discuss that proposal than at a private hompage.

You try to motivate also to include Janus chess somehow within that
proposal. If you would have noticed in my current Smirf program beta,
Janus chess is included in that fine 10x8 and 8x8 aware program. But I
have to learn, that there are some incompatibilities, which force to
exclude Janus from that ramdom idea: a) the notation for castling is
reversed, b) the usage of 'J' instead of 'A' in FEN and encoded moves,
c) the need to also encode the inverted castling by preceeding the castling
block within FEN with an 's' for 'symmetric'. 

If you would spend some time in watching the Smirf program approach you
would notice such interesting things like that it supports all capablanca
based positions (and even CRC or Janus chess) and a PGN load and save of
played games.

Regards, Reinhard.

Hi Reinhard
I had given a glance on your site many months ago and I don't remembered
this proposal (perhaps I wasn't interested in it). Up to now I don't
know
the castling rules but I think that it isn't a problem to change 'J'
in
'A' in the notation, because Janus and Archbishop are practically the
same
piece (I think). I hope you increase the strength of your program that I
haven't yet downloaded but I don't think it's yet more strong than
Shredder in regular chess.
I want only know from you what do you think about to ponder the best
dispositions in randomize process (for example excluding the dispositions
with undefended pawns). 
Regards
Giulio

Well, I do not want to talk that much on Janus Chess here. But the difference is more subtile, e.g. the a-side castling brings the king to the b-file instead of the c-file.

When I have understood your intentions right (I am not sure) you want to know something on the filtering of those 48.000 basic positions. Well, the idea is, that having such a big bool of randomized targets, it would be a good idea to kick off all of them which could have the potential to be an argument that the CRC would produce unfair or unstable positions. So reducing to about 21.000 positions without undefended pawns will nevertheless leave back a huge number of possible starting arrays, which might be sufficient for the current century.

Reinhard.

Question on encoding Capablanca FEN strings:

Smirf actually encodes positions like:
rnbqckabnr/pppppppppp/0/0/0/0/PPPPPPPPPP/RNBQCKABNR w KQkq - 0 1

do you think it would be better to use completed numbers like:
rnbqckabnr/pppppppppp/10/10/10/10/PPPPPPPPPP/RNBQCKABNR w KQkq - 0 1

I am not sure, what to do. So I am gathering arguments.

Reinhard.

There has been stated that CRC (Capablanca Random Chess / FullChess) would
not yet be playable e.g. as a Zillons emulation. But that is not quite
correct. Of course there already a beta version is existing of the soon to
be finished Smirf program. You could find it downloadable at
http://www.chessbox.de/beta.html (see Project Chronicle at 2004-Sep-29).
But it has to be remarked that this is a version finally to be released as
shareware. Thus a lot of functions are shrinked and the user sometimes will
be 'invited' to watch the licensing screen.

Before I was aware of the existence of Capablanca Random Chess(CRC), I had
designed my own hybrid of Fischer Random Chess(FRC)(sometimes known as
Chess960) and Capablanca Chess. My hybrid, Capablanca84000, includes 84000
set-ups as opposed to the 21259 for CRC.
The rule differences are:
1. CRC states that the queen and archbishop must be placed on opposite
coloured squares. Since neither piece is colour-bound (unlike the bishops)
I had not chosen to include this rule. Indeed, a common and logical first
move for the archbishop is that of the knight-style jump, thus landing it
on a different coloured square. If it can be proven that the jump is the
more common first move for the archbishop, it would be equally logical to
place the queen and archbishop on same coloured squares.
2. CRC states that each pawn must be covered. FRC does not and neither
does Capablanca84000. If FRC did include this rule, it would no longer
contain 960 set-ups since some contain uncovered pawns. For example,
set-ups which begin with knight-knight-rook starting from either the a- or
h-file contain 2 uncovered pawns on either the a and b files or g and h
files.

Why filter random positions based on Capablanca' extended board?

Let's talk first on FRC (I have written a small book on that in German language). One main intention to create FRC (or Chess960) has been to make it impossible to provide a complete opening theory for each position. Thus the number of 960 distinct starting positions is helpful to reach that goal. Uncovered pawns are not that problematic because any situation will have to be set up randomly very short before a game starts.

Looking at the Shogi game there are indeed three uncovered pawns in the beginning and the game still does exist today.

Capablanca's chess is somehow different to that because of the huge number of possible starting arrays viewing all shuffled combinations. But during the history from Carrera to Bird, Capablanca [through to contemporary versions] it has been a point of critic and missing acceptance of that extended board. So it could not be counter productive to select special starting arrays which seem to be positionally better constructed, without reducing the huge number of possible initial positions too much.

That leads to the both new rules: a) placing Queen and Archbishop (Archangel) at different colored squares, and b) avoiding unprotected pawns. I cannot see any negative payload connected with this two additional demands. More then 20.000 possibilities should be sufficient.

Also see a nice SMIRF (providing both: FRC and CRC) preview at: http://www.chessbox.de/_tmp/SmirfPrototyp.png

Reply to Jeanette:  I am one of Capablanca's granddaughter.  I don't
think Sergio        
Capablanca is related to us.  I'll ask  some other family members anyway.

To Jeanette and Alina with inquiries dated 2005-05-14 and 2004-12-23
respectively:
There is a good probability that whenever you see an individual with
Capablanca as his or her last name, there is going to be a relationship
with José Raúl Capablanca (1888-1942).
Sergio Gustavo Capablanca (1918-1997) was the son of Bernardo Salvador
Tadeo Capablanca Graupera (1885-1940) and Maria de la Gloria Graupera
Capablanca (1890-1975). Bernardo Salvador, was one of José Raúl's
brothers, the others were Aquiles, Ramiro and Carlos and six sisters,
Aida, Hilda, Graciela, Alicia, Zenaida and Clemencia.
I hope this helps. I am Sergio M. Capablanca, son of Sergio Gustavo
Capablanca and grandnephew of José Raúl.

'Uncovered pawns are not that problematic because any situation will
have to be set up randomly very short before a game starts. 

Looking at the Shogi game there are indeed three uncovered pawns in the
beginning and the game still does exist today.

Capablanca's chess is somehow different to that because of the huge
number of possible starting arrays viewing all shuffled combinations.'

I think the problem is more a matter of the piece set and shape of the
board. Even if a pawn is undefended in a Fischerandom setup, it can't be
attacked instantly, unless it's an a/b/g/h pawn and the piece on its
diagonal is a bishop or queen. But an archbishop or chancellor has a
pretty good chance of being able to make an instant attack on that pawn by
jumping over its own pawn row (as the chancellor can indeed do to the
i-pawn in Capablanca's setup), and the diagonal discovered attack can
affect 80% of the pawns instead of half.

Upon further review, we're discussing opposite ends of the issue. The
points I just made are why the no-undefended-pawn rule is desirable; the
large number of positions is what makes it practical (i. e. you still have
a huge pool of positions to choose from).

Reinhard Scharnagl has a program that plays Capablanca Chess. He is the one that made the random version too. His program, called SMIRF, also plays other large variant Chess games and regular Chess as well. Janus Chess, Embassy Chess, and Bird's Chess are in it. He says he's still working on it and trying to make it stronger, but it's had little trouble defeating me at BrainKing at Janus Chess for some time now. He just recently added Embassy Chess and the SMIRF is showing me how to play that game as well. I've played Janus Chess the most of the games, but I will get better at Embassy Chess. I've never actually played a game of Bird's Chess or Capablanca Chess, though those two games I've known for many years and only in the last couple of years did I get to play the other ones. The same goes for Grand Chess, though that's a 10 × 10 board size game it has a lot of things in common with these other games. SMIRF link: http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachsmirf_e.html

It doesn't play very well without the keys to unlock the machine's thinking powers. He listed them on the BrainKing 10 × 8 Chess discussion board.

I took a look at Grotesque Chess. To me, it is too much unlike chess so it
would get low marks for being a viable variant. There is no way to put
the
Bishops on long diagonals so finachettoes are non existant. Next, the
Knight placement upsets the addage 'knights before bishops.' If you
play
Nc3 or Nh3 you block in the c-pawn or h-pawn which would keep the Bb1 or
Bi1 locked in place. So, you need to play the c- or h-pawn almost by
force
to the 4th rank before putting a knight in that same file. This detracts
from the game. So playing the knights even closer to the center on their
first move again seems almost forced. And knights on e3 anf f3
immediately
interferes with the the diagonal range of two majors, the Qc1 and Eh1. 

I think it safe to say the Grotesque setup introduces more problems than
it solves so at least you picked the right name for it.

If anyone would like to see multiple attempts at 8x8 Capablanca chess, you
can go to this thread here and get ahold of a ZRF file which contains 15
variants on the idea:
http://abstractgamers.org/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=54&page=1#Item_3

Note there are now many free computer programs that can play the 10x8
variants with the Capablanca piece set. Many do use the WinBoard protocol
to communicate their moves, so they can be made to play each other
automatically under the WinBoard GUI.

Pages with many links to downloadable engines you will find at 
http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/10x8.html and
[at another site.]

The results of a recent tournament of the WB compatible engines at long
time control (55 min + 5 sec/move), where each engine had to play each
other engine 10 times, over 5 different opening setups (Carrera, Bird,
Capablanca, and Embassy), led to the following ranking:

Rank Name               Elo    +    - games score oppo. draws 
   1 Joker80 n         2432   96   83    70   80%  2110    0% 
   2 TJchess10x8       2346   83   76    70   72%  2122    4% 
   3 Smirf 1.73h       2304   80   75    70   68%  2128    4% 
   4 Smirf Donation    2165   73   73    70   53%  2148    9% 
   5 [other software] 
   6 Fairy-Max 4.8 v   2027   72   77    70   34%  2168   11% 
   7 BigLion80 4apr    1945   76   84    70   26%  2179    7% 
   8 ArcBishop80 1.00  1822   86  103    70   15%  2197    4% 

Except for Smirf 1.73h, all the engines are available for free download,
from their various sources. In addition, there exist several programs with
incompatible interfaces, such as ChessV and Zillions of Games. Their level
of play is not thoroughly tested, as the incompatibility of their
interfaces makes it impossible to play them against each other without
assistance of a Human operator, which again makes it difficult to conduct
the hundreds of games necessary for reliable rating determination.
Compared to the ranking above, Zillions would rank at the very bottom. 

[The above has been edited to remove a name and site reference. It is the
policy of cv.org to avoid mention of that particular name and site to
remove any threat of lawsuits. Sorry to have to do that, but we must
protect ourselves. - J. Joyce]

I am sorry to have put your site in jeopardy, I was not aware that giving a link to a site as a source of information could make you subject to a lawsuit.

But why did you delete the reference to poor Michel's program? My own engines are mentioned on the unspeakable website as well, on the very page of which you deleted the link. I even gave permission to its owner to host them there for download, should I no longer want to host them myself. Does that mean I will in the future also not be allowed to mention any of my own engines here???

Would it at least be allowed to mention the perfomance rating of the [other software]? Anyway, people interested in the complete result of the WinBoard General 10x8 Championship 2008, can find it on my own website, on the page:

http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/BotG08G/finalstanding.html

HG, before I became editor, this site and editors had considerable problems. It is unfortunate that people cannot always get along, and things sometimes get unpleasant. It is one of the reasons we ask for civil discourse. Sadly, things have not always run smoothly, and we edit. This editing includes both specific names and more general references, most of which are obvious upon reflection. 

If you don't mind a bit of levity here, I'll say you have certainly not managed to get yourself on our watch list. So you are quite welcome to post references to your own site [unless it becomes advertising - this site does charge for advertising ;-) ] and you can certainly reference such people, places, and things as you desire on your own site. A number of people maintain their own sites, and post variants and related works on them, with links posted here at CV. No problem, especially since you're not selling anything. But any reference to a banned topic will be edited out here on this site. And this is very much a 'G' [for 'General'] site, kids are welcome. So we keep it safe for children, also.

I hope this has clarified things [although it's probably just muddied them up more]. With the extremely rare exception, we invite people to participate - politely, of course. Enjoy.
Joe

• The option of having both Bishops start up on squares of the same color
• Reverse Symmetry
• Symmetric Castling to either side
  In a 10x8 setup it could be: either short or long castling (but not both)
  • short castling: O-Ob is Kb1 & Rc1 [Kb8 & Rc8 for black]; O-Oi is Ki1 & Rh1 [Ki8 & Rh8 for black]
  • long castling: O-O-Oc is Kc1 & Rd1 [Kc8 & Rd8 for black]; O-O-Oh is Kh1 & Rg1 [Kh8 & Rg8 for black])
• The Bishop Adjustment Rule to give players the choice (if they wish) to move a Bishop to the opposite color squares in setups where both Bishops start on the same color squares.

• The option of having both Bishops start up on squares of the same color
• Reverse Symmetry
• Symmetric Castling to either side (Players must agree before the game which type of castling [short or long] will they use in the game)
  In a 10x8 setup castling can be either short (O-O) or long (O-O-O), but not both:
  • O-Ob is Kb1 & Rc1 [Kb8 & Rc8 for black]; or O-Oi which is Ki1 & Rh1 [Ki8 & Rh8 for black]
  • O-O-Oc is Kc1 & Rd1 [Kc8 & Rd8 for black]; or O-O-Oh which is Kh1 & Rg1 [Kh8 & Rg8 for black]
• The Bishop Adjustment Rule giving players the choice (if they want) to change one of the Bishops to the opposite color squares in those setups where the Bishops start off on the same color.

HG, you seem to see the problem area. In this particular area, the site policy is annoyingly restrictive, but that's unfortunately how it is. I sympathize; at one time, my Capa variant had seven different setups, running all the way from Variant A up to G, which one I realized I couldn't use, luckily before posting. I wound up getting permission from Christian Freeling to use his Grand Chess setup, and decided to use only that on both my Capa and Grand Chess variant individual pages, to keep it simple. 

Please share all the information you can here, and feel free to reference both your site and other sites should you wish. I assure you we do the least editing we think we can. Very little relating [however tenuously] to chess variants is turned away. [I somehow think there might be a person or two - maybe more - who feel we should turn away even more than we do, so you can't please everybody no matter what you do.]

Would it be OK then, if I just circumscribe the [other software] in my tournament as 'a version of the well known open-source program TSCP, adapted to play some 10x8 variants', and call it 'TSCP-derivative' for short?

Or is it too risky to mention the name of popular Chess engines like TSCP even in their normal Chess version, (or Capablanca version), once someone created a derivative of them that is capable to play the unspeakable variant?

H.G. Muller says today ''8x10 are rapidly becoming more popular with engine programmers.'' It is ironic that only one 8x10 board appears in 
the many hundred diagrams altogether in D. Pritchard's original fifteen-year-old 1994 'Encyclopedia CVs'. The one 8x10 there is on or about page  203.   Yet '8x10' should have been self-evident  as the correct expansion of played-out standard 8x8, since this H.R. Capablanca, expert Mad Queen player for what it is worth, had it almost 100 years ago now with reuse of the intuitive, albeit awkward and unbalancing, old Carrera Centaur(BN) and Champion(RN). Or put it favourably that our Capablanca orthodox grandmaster was unusually prescient for such olden time  between the world wars, not himself to survive World War II era, some would say for his own excesses in lifestyle, dead  for sixty-six years now. Would Capa still espouse his tweak of Carrera/Bird, or would he fall for some more recent ''prolificist'' extravaganza? As starter, probably he would agree there are no replacements for the F.I.D.E. 8x8 formula with 9 or more ranks. And very recent smaller boards as 7x8 are clear worsenings. Still plausible are the right-fit 2,3, or 4 new pieces on 8x12, set up like mediaeval Courier Chess. At least Jose Raul would recognize that by next milestone year 2100, there can surely be no more interest in intermediate Mad Queen than in Shatranj itself. Counting predecessor form the one reigned from circa 600-1500, the other 1500-2000. Not many Shatranj players around by JRC's day, or even Philidor's, or likely even Carrera's.

'Have you tried the Modern Capablanca Random Chess viariant with your engines?'

No, my engines do not have FRC-type castling ability yet. It is still on my to-do list for Joker80, together with allowing it to play on 8x8 by filling up part of the board with impassible objects. (It already uses such objects to confine the pieces to 10x8, as its internal board is 32x12, so this is a minor change; it just has to adapt the positional center-points table to where the new corners are. And of course use a different type of castling.) The main objective would be to play in FRC competitions.

The Modern CRC variant doesn't particularly appeal to me. The resulting games should be indistinguishable from normal CRC. The only difference is the opening array. The Bishop adjustment rule is also an opening thing. Opening theory never had much appeal to me, I consider it the dullest part of Chess. None of my engines ever had an opening book, even in variants like 8x8 FIDE, where extensive opening theory exists. The Bishop adjustment rule seems awkward from an aestethic point of view, and half-hearted from a logical point of view: first you change the rules by allowing arrays with like Bishops, and then you largely subvert the effect of itby allowing the adjustment. As the disadvantage of having the Bishops on like colors was measured by me to be half a Pawn, not doing it would be very poor strategy.

For exploring the possibilities like Bishops offer, it would be much cleaner to augment the Bishop with a single orthognal backward step as non-capture only. Then people can actually use it without hesitation, as they can always undo the effect later. The extra move of such a 'Naughty Bishop' hardly has any tactical value in itsels, as it is a non-capture, and directed backwards. It added only about 15 cP to the piece value. Introducing a piece of different gait is much cleaner than adding a special, complicated rule.

The symmetric castling seems to add nothing, it looks just like a difference for the sake of being different. The same holds for the inversion symmetry in stead of vertical-flip symmetry. This doesn't mean this would be a poor game to play, of course. But I think such irrelevant differences do make it a poor design as a CV.

H.G.

Thanks for your feedback.

Don't neccessarily agree with it, but I apreciate it.

Note that WinBoard, for the smaller board sizes, also has a command for saving its board display as a bitmap files. (File -> Save Diagram...) To customize the diagram you can use all the options for setting piece color / square color, or use user-defined piece symbols in stead of the built-in bitmaps for the 2 x 22 piece types it knows.

I know in discussion of Capablanca and other games in the Knight+Rook and Knight+Bishop family of variants, there is concern over uncovered pawns.  I happened to just look at the Capablanca arrangement and was curious if anyone else might of tried to do the following: Swap the positions of the King's Knight and the Chancellor.  When I did this, it looks like the initial position of every pawn is covered in the game, and there are no uncovered pawns.

Anyone else ever play with this?  I know the Chancellor and Archbishop don't have the same symmetry, but it appears there isn't a problem with uncovered pawns.

So, what we had as the original position:
White:
King f1; Queen e1; Archbishop c1; Chancellor h1; Rook a1, j1; Knight b1, i1; Bishop d1, g1; Pawn a2, b2, c2, d2, e2, f2, g2, h2, i2, j2.

Black:
King f8; Queen e8; Archbishop c8; Chancellor h8; Rook a8, j8; Knight b8, i8; Bishop d8, g8; Pawn a7, b7, c7, d7, e7, f7, g7, h7, i7, j7.

Becomes...

White:
King f1; Queen e1; Archbishop c1; Chancellor i1; Rook a1, j1; Knight b1, h1; Bishop d1, g1; Pawn a2, b2, c2, d2, e2, f2, g2, h2, i2, j2.

Black:
King f8; Queen e8; Archbishop c8; Chancellor i8; Rook a8, j8; Knight b8, h8; Bishop d8, g8; Pawn a7, b7, c7, d7, e7, f7, g7, h7, i7, j7.

This is a statical way of looking at the position. A modern dynamic approach is to show, in opening lines, that the pawn weakness is of detriment to the variant. A weakness in the position can be good if it creates a strategical tension. It can allow white to take the initiative. Capablanca, of course, knew this. This is an important factor in Fide-chess, which is essential to its popularity. If white had had no advantage in the initial position, then grandmasters would have settled for a draw immediately. So if you believe that the Capablanca position is inferior, then you have to prove it by showing us the lines that either lead to a clear advantage, or stifles the game so that only a few variations can be practiced.
I have suggested a flexible approach to the Capablanca setup, which allows the players to relocate either the king or queen before play begins:
http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/caparelocation.htm
/Mats

This year we have 8 participants; ChessV is new compared to last year, and other programs now have improved versions. Each program will play each other program 10 times, from 5 different opening arrays (Bird, Capablanca, Carrera, Embassy and an unmentionable one).

Live viewing of the games is possible at:

Live 10x8 Games

After one full round robin of Bird's Chess, the standings are:

Cross table, sorted by score percentage, Buchholz, SB 

                              Jo TS TJ Sm Fa Ch Ar Bi 
 1. Joker80 n                 ## 11 11 11 11 11 11 11  100%  14.0 ( 84.0,  84.0) 
 2. TSCP 10x8                 00 ## 0= 10 11 11 11 11   68%   9.5 ( 93.0,  42.5) 
 3. TJchess10x8 0.121         00 1= ## 01 =0 11 11 11   64%   9.0 ( 94.0,  40.3) 
 4. Smirf 1.75t               00 01 10 ## 10 11 11 11   64%   9.0 ( 94.0,  39.5) 
 5. Fairy-Max 4.8 v           00 00 =1 01 ## 1= 11 11   57%   8.0 ( 96.0,  33.5) 
 6. ChessV 0.94               00 00 00 00 0= ## 11 =1   29%   4.0 (104.0,   8.5) 
 7. ArcBishop80 1.00          00 00 00 00 00 00 ## =1   11%   1.5 (109.0,   1.5) 
 8. BigLion80 2.23x           00 00 00 00 00 =0 =0 ##    7%   1.0 (110.0,   2.8)

Rank Name                Elo    +    - games score oppo. draws 
   1 Joker80 n          2435  125   96    70   92%  1938    1% 
   2 TJchess10x8 0.121  2172   81   76    70   70%  1975    6% 
   3 Smirf 1.75t        2156   81   77    70   68%  1978    4% 
   4 TSCP something     2047   75   75    70   54%  1993    9% 
   5 Fairy-Max 4.8 v    1990   74   74    70   49%  2001    9% 
   6 ChessV 0.94        1921   73   75    70   41%  2011   10% 
   7 ArcBishop80 1.00   1642   88  103    70   14%  2051    4% 
   8 BigLion80 2.23x    1636   88  103    70   13%  2052    6% 

Note that this list only contains WinBoard-compatible engines, and engines for which a WinBoard adapter exists. There also exist non-compatible engines (e.g. Zillions). Except for Smirf, which has reverted to the status of a private engine, all mentioned engines can be downloaded for free from the internet.

After several years with no new developments in terms of engines, there was a flurry of activity last year amongst engine programmers. Five new engines appeared that can play Capablanca-like 10x8 variants, some of them very strong: 

Bihasa    by Ferdinand Mosca
Nebiyu    by Daniel Shawul
Sjaak     by Evert Glebbeek
Heretic   by Martin Sedlak
Spartacus by me

In addition the existing engines TJchess10x8 and SMIRF were improved.

As a result there are now 13 engines that can play under WinBoard, which makde it high time to conduct another automated tourney. So I am currently running 'Battle of the Goths 2012'.

For those interested in 10x8 Chess, the games can be watched live at http://80.100.28.169/gothic/chess.html .

In spite of what I see as the drawbacks of this variant (unprotected pawn for each side in setup, rectangular board [though allowing smothered and back rank mates still], bishops clearly stronger than knights, the fact the chancellors might be developed symmetrically and traded in short order sometimes), this was a good try historically to cut down on draws and opening theory.

On this particular variant's board dimensions of 10x8, as compared to 8x8, IMHO the archbishops would seem to come closer in value to chancellors (though not queens), though I personally have lingering doubts about archbishops being quite as good by comparison on 8x8 or 10x10 boards, any computer studies aside. IMHO, the bishop component of an archbishop would seem to have a number of extra potential good squares near the centre (or in range of the enemy camp) on a 10x8 board, without the rook component of a chancellor benefitting as much as often in return (unlike would be the case on a 10x10 board). On a 10x8 board the knight component of an archbishop would seem to have a number of extra potential good squares near the centre (or the enemy camp) for local scope, balancing the benefit received by the rook component of a queen on such an empty larger board than 8x8.

My tentative estimates for the piece values in this variant would be: P=1; N=3.5 approx.; B=3.75; R=5.5; A=8.25; C=10; Q=10.25 and the fighting value of the K=3.2 (though it naturally cannot be traded).

edit: Here's a 10x8 CV that uses 2 powerful and unusual pieces, besides the chess army and Berolina pawns:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/gamma2-chess

Also, here's a 10x8 variant that uses Frogs besides the chess army:

https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/frog-chess

A link to a published preset for a circular Capablanca Chess style variant:

Circular Capa Chess

My tentative estimates for the piece values in this variant would be: P=1; N=3.625; B=3.75; R=5.5; A=8.375; C=10.125; Q=10.25 and the fighting value of the K=3.2 (though it naturally cannot be traded).

The piece values of Capablanca Chess have been measured with quite good precision. Like in orthodox Chess the Bishops do not have a single value, but have to be differentiated in 'first Bishop' (i.e. a lone one) and 'second Bishop'. This can also be expressed as a base value and a pair bonus. In orthodox Chess the base values of B and N are equal (3.25), although the B-N difference is slightly dependent on the number of remaining Pawns. (Strict equality is achieved for 5 Pawns). The pair bonus is then 0.5 Pawn.

On a 10x8 board the base values of B and N already differ by 0.5 Pawn, and the B-pair bonus just adds to this. This makes BB vs NNP an almost perfectly balanced trade, while in orthodox Chess the player with the remaining NNP would have a clear advantage, about as large as the Bishop side would have after a BB vsn NN trade. A Bishop profits from wide boards, probably because those enhance the chances that both its forward moves hit the enemy camp. In Cylinder Chess the Bishop gets even closer in value to the Rook (4 Pawns + bonus vs 5).

In your tentative estimates the Q-C difference is too small (it is 0.5 Pawn; CP vs Q is as large an advantage as Q vs C), and a the Q-A difference too large (not accounting for the fact that AP has the upper hand over Q, by about as much as C has over A).

Regarding the first version of Capablanca Chess, that is with the use of a 10x10 board, I recall reading somewhere that this was tried in testing games between Capablanca and a certain opponent (I forget who), and that the conclusion was that games tended to take (arguably) too long to finish. In any case, I'm wondering if anyone knows if in the 10x10 version, were pawns allowed to move differently than in normal chess, e.g. could a pawn take a triple step on their first move, besides a double step, if not breaking other rules of the game (similar to modern day Omega Chess' pawn rules)?

According to Pritchard, yes, the Pawn could move up to 3 spaces on first move.

Thanks Greg.

Here's the wiki re: Capablanca Chess that I think refered to earlier (re: including mention of 10x10 version):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capablanca_Chess#Setup_and_rules

I'm wondering whether anyone has observed that it tends to be difficult for either side to castle fairly early on (if at all) in typical games of (10x8) Capablanca Chess (i.e. final version of this CV).

Quite a while back I invented a new form of castling (originally for use in my 12x8 Wide Chess CV invention). This form of castling became known as Fast Castling - assuming at least some people like this form of castling, maybe an experiment could be tried sometime where (10x8) Capablanca Chess is played with the use of Fast Castling rules (or at least posters could give their thoughts on if the change might be a good idea). The rules for Fast Castling are as follows:

"A king that has never moved, and is not in check, can 'leap' once a game, along the first rank, to any unattacked empty square between it and an unmoved rook, followed by said rook 'leaping' to the king's initial square so as to complete castling in one single move. It does not matter if any squares in between are occupied or under attack."