Ratings & Comments

Since I haven't gotten MariaDB to work on the original server, I switched the domains of the servers. However, there are still things to fix, and I still have to deal with the original server.

There appears to be some kind of corruption from the MariaDB 10 installation that is preventing a reinstallation of MariaDB 5.5 from working. When I check its status after reinstalling version 5.5, it says "Failed to start MariaDB 10.6.4 database server." I expect I will have to reinstall CentOS, but I don't want to get it started right now, because it is late. Unfortunately, the new VPS also seems to be having issues with MariaDB 10. It frequently loses connection with the MySQL server, and I have to refresh a page a few times before it connects.

Are there any plans to restore this functionality?

I tried to yesterday and failed. I have not been able to get MariaDB 10 to work reliably on either server, HostSlayer or RackNerd. It used to work before I tried updating the HostSlayer VPS to Rocky Linux via updating to CentOS 8 first. So, maybe there is some setting that has to be corrected. For now, chessvariants.com runs on HostSlayer with CentOS 7, PHP 7, and MariaDB 5.5, while chessvariants.org runs on RackNerd with Rocky Linux 8, PHP 8, and MariaDB 10. Until I can get things working correctly on the new RackNerd VPS, I will continue to use MariaDB 5.5, and comment searching will remain disabled.

I did occasionally use the "info" page, previously linked to from the icon of an index entry. But I do not consider this worth keeping either. Those pages can still be reached from the "info" link in the footer of the item's actual page (except perhaps for multi-item pages?).

I did occasionally use the "info" page, previously linked to from the icon of an index entry. But I do not consider this worth keeping either. Those pages can still be reached from the "info" link in the footer of the item's actual page (except perhaps for multi-item pages?).

That's why I figured it would be okay to get rid of the link from the icon. The link in the footer had been the only link to the info page I had been aware of, and I figured it would be enough for anyone who wants to go to that page. I think most people would be unaware that the icon links to an info page or would just be interested in the link to the actual page rather than the link to a page with metadata about it. The index page really gave no indication that the icons linked to something different than the actual page, and most people who clicked on an icon would probably be surprised that it didn't go to the actual page.

One more reason for no longer supporting offline pages is that many pages now include script-generated images with the drawdiagram.php script. These will work on a website running PHP, but they will not work offline. If I wanted offline pages to support them, I would have to write a script that finds each link to a script-generated image, creates a copy of the image with a unique name, and replaces the link to the script-generated image with a link to the copy of its output. That's too much work for something no one probably needs anyway, and archive.org can already make copies of them.

I agree that a piece that changes direction after 3 steps could be awkward to visualize. It would be worse, though, if the first step were a jump to the third square, because with a sliding move, you can easily see if a nearby piece blocks the movement.

On the other hand, with an initial leap the blocking would only be on a single diagonal, rather than having to check the nearby orthogonal squares as well. A tradeoff really, though in any case due to the ability to avoid nearby blocking pieces the t[HB] is probably too powerful (or, on small enough boards, too awkward) to use in (most?) games anyway.

<This> seems to work in WYSIWYG, and also in markdown if you do <this\>

It seems like you can also use &lt; and &gt;

OK, thank you very much!

Thanks for running the tournament!

You are welcome Daniel

Is there no one interested in this?

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+1&settings=Applet

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+2&settings=Applet

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+3&settings=Applet

Well, I fixed the previous problem we had as Fergus suggested, by retrieving the shuffle made when the game was created from the constant 'startshuffle', like:

  if isconst startshuffle:        // shuffle has already been determined
    setsystem space @startshuffle;// retrieve it
  else:                           // new game; must shuffle
    ... // perform shuffling on $space
    setconst startshuffle $space;        // save the shuffle for persistent use
  endif;

That is, Fergus told me to write an @ before it, otherwise a wrong, uninitialized variable was retrieved, which led to a board of all white pawns. This seemed to work at the time. If you get a new shuffle now, it can only be because the test "isconst startshuffle" returns false, and it starts making a new shuffle rather than retreiving the old one (which apparently for some reason ceased to exist). If you shuffle again you are unlikely to get the same position. Perhaps Fergus knows how a constant can disappear.

Happy holidays to you all!

Yes yes, excellentes fêtes à tous, tantissimi auguri a tutti, very happy season's feasts to all, muy buenas fiestas a todos, tre bonaj ferioj al cxiuj. You are a great community. Take care of you and your beloved ones.

Merry (belated) Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

Omega Chess is an interesting case, aside from being (I'd guess) something of a commercial success. 10x10 (instead of 104 cells) would be what a purist would wish for, and that size might look better on someone's coffee table (I should have mentioned in my previous post an obvious point [to be clear], that a replacement CV(s) for chess would do best if it could be played on a physical set).

Omega Chess also has the known drawback that K+R normally cannot mate lone K due to the extra corner squares off the edge. However, this incidentally gives me the idea that since Omega Chess could be played on a 12x12 board (with many squares covered up, except the corner squares), 12x12 physical sets may look okay (even on coffee tables), besides 10x10 ones - it's just a question of whether 144 cells, rather than 100 or 104, is too much for many people's mental grasp (though 12x12 Gross Chess is one possible counterexample, that has had quite a bit of testing, at least on Game Courier).

Still, I have the feeling that 100 cells is already a size allowing for more than enough extra pieces in a setup, for a given CV never to be exhausted in terms of opening theory (as FIDE chess now may be in danger of). A problem, though, is that unlike 8x8, on 10x10 already bishops would be normally significantly stronger than Kts, if both types are in a CV. Plus, pawns may already take longer to promote on such a longer board, which could slow things down. However, any attempt to vary from FIDE Chess will always involve tradeoffs, even if the CV invented is very interesting.

I think if a 10x10 game ever became very popular, 12x12 wouldn't seem so huge anymore.

What would it take though, for a bigger game to replace the current chess in popularity? People would have to feel that 64 squares is too few, and be dissatisfied enough to try something else. But there would need to be an obvious game to try, or it's possible that none would ever attract enough attention to be considered the standard chess. Having multiple candidates diminishes the obviousness of all of them. Right now, perhaps, most people interested in chess variants aren't looking for a new standard, they're looking for variety. I know I am, at least.

I wonder why the 64 square chess is so popular anyway, aside from being popular for its popularity. Could it be that people tend to prefer smaller games, as long as they're not too small?

Worrying about bishops being stronger than knights seems unnecessary, since there would be new pieces anyway. Also, the time it takes for pawns to promote doesn't depend on the board size so much as on the setup and promotion rules. In Gross Chess, pawns can promote with 5 moves, and in Apothecary Chess they can promote with only 4.

A fresh replacement CV for chess discussion really should be in a NextChess thread, but I chose to put it in this more recent thread. All the same, the Next Chess (if ever one) strongly relates to the future of chess variants, as it is from the best CVs that a Next Chess (or more than one) will be born.

Does there have to be only one Next Chess, in terms of one being the number one popular variant? I used to think so, though some have argued that since various forms of Poker are played and are each successful, there is room for more than one popular Next Chess. Right now, the undeniable Classics are chess, shogi and Chinese Chess, but with chess suspected to be most popular (600 million adults says FIDE) - some say Chinese Chess must be played more, but I haven't found authoritative figures.

Anyway, chess is showing its age, and many think it will be played out sooner or later, opening theory-wise. Lots of draws at elite level, or engine level. Otherwise, chess would be a fine game - the fact it is a managable (and square) 8x8 size makes it all the nicer. However, for there to be longevity to a CV, it may require more pieces in the setup than 16 per side - or 9x9 shogi's 20 per side. That's where 10x10 comes in, perhaps. Even if Grand Chess is a winner as a Next Chess, at least there are 100 cells to play the game on, so opening theory is also hard to exhaust, that way. Plus, a nice square 10x10 board may be still managable for most people, compared to 12x12.

I'm for listing candidates, then narrowing them down if possible, to get one Next Chess. If that's not easy, maybe the more CVs the merrier, if lots of people play each. CVP website can be viewed as a lab where we try to come up with winning CV designs, and test them, or at least rate them.

A possible counterargument to 12×12 being too much for a ‘standard’ might be Chu Shōgi — after all, it was the most popular Chess in Japan before the introduction of drops to its smaller brother.

I'd expect a ‘Next Chess’ would be likely to at least have a single set of basic rules (i.e. regarding check, promotion, winning conditions, ⁊c.), probably the FIDE ones, though arguably even there there is some tweaking that might be worth doing; I would be very much in favour, though, of a poker‐like situation where multiple games (probably just different piece sets, in practice) enjoyed comparable popularity — and might even be mixed regularly in both casual and tournament play.

I'd have to look again, but I recall Chu Shogi has a lot of short-range pieces. Reasonably popular (so far) 12x12 Gross Chess does have quite a few long-range types though, which may definitely be a possible counterargument to 12x12 being too hard for most people to grasp. Maybe (like for Chu Shogi) a lot of folks would prefer a well-played CV game to not last for too many moves on average, though.

A very Much agree that the future chess should be more variants enjoying similar popularity! I agree with you Bn Em here!

One figure I've seen (on CVP website) is that 200 million play Chinese Chess (maybe low estimate), and I've seen elsewhere that 20 million play 9x9 shogi (again maybe too low). So, at the moment at least, both chess and Chinese Chess are the (2) most extremely popular CVs, to say the least.

edit: From the main page, a link to Fergus Duniho's ideas re: Designing good chess variants, fwiw:

https://www.chessvariants.com/opinions.dir/fergus/design.html

Chu does have quite a few short‐range pieces, like (Sho) Shōgi; it's not exactly devoid of longer‐range ones though: Rook, Bishop, Queen, as well as Dragon Horse and ‐King are the more conventional ones (and all but the queen in pairs), and it even has, to Western eyes, weird things like side‐/vertical movers and their promotions. And even with the short‐range ones, at first sight the variety of very similar moves might seem confusing just as several long‐range pieces might.

Gross Chess is popular here among CV fans; that speaks, no doubt, to its playability and potential popularity — and may well indicate it as a good candidate for a successor — but says very little imo about how 12×12 might fare among a more lay audience — while Chu demonstrates that it's possible for it to hold that status.

The point about game length is potentially a concern once the board gets bigger (and is almost certainly, alongside tractability, once of the limiting factors for going to e.g. 14×14 and beyond as anything ore than a novelty), though I'd've expected at least games with plenty of long‐range pieces to balance that somewhat. I wonder how long the average game of Gross or Metamachy (of which I've been playing a fair bit against Jocly's AI recently) is, esp. compared to Chu.

Tonight I went through Game Courier's list of all games, looking at those played at least 10 times, to date, to compile a preliminary list of 10x10 CVs. That is, for people to consider at leisure, to whittle them down to 1 or more possible 'Next Chess' candidates (if they could choose/predict), with the assumption that 10x10 is a very good board size (maybe the best). Some of these games I know have been played elsewhere, perhaps many times, and all seem interesting in one way or another:

1. Eurasian Chess (x103);
2. Grand Chess (x77);
3. Shako (x63);
4. Opulent Chess (x61);
5. Sac Chess (x61);
6. Caissa Britannia (x55);
7. EuChess (x41);
8. Colossus (x35);
9. Expanded Chess (x27);
10. Grand Cavalier Chess (x27);
11. Unicorn Great Chess (x26);
12. Storm the Ivory Tower (x25);
13. Bear Chess (x24);
14. Grand Shatranj (x23 = D & R versions in total);
15. Wildebeest Chess Decimal (x18);
16. TenCubed Chess (x17);
17. Butterfly Chess (x15);
18. Centennial Chess (x14);
19. Great Chess (x14);
20. Jetan (x11);
21. Atlantean Barroom Shatranj (x11);
22. Ajax Chess (x10);
23. Mimic Chess (x10).

Edit: My own personal Next Chess candidates I can tentatively narrow to #2,3,4,6,8,9 and 13 in the list above.

I think Eurasian Chess and Wildebeest Decimal Chess are easily good enough to consider as well.

Another excellent 10x10 game that was not mentioned by Kevin but was very much played on this website (but I don't think it is played elsewhere) is Rococo, even it differs a little more from chess than the other mentioned variants. Rococo is also a "recognised variant" on the CVP (for what it's worth). But I suppose that accustomed chess players would more easily be interested in more "conventional" variants.

I wasn't sure Rococo was truly a 10x10 CV, since the edge squares have special, restrictive rules applied to them, compared to the other squares (though I guess something similar might somehow apply to Storm the Ivory Tower, or even Eurasian Chess, each with River rules among others).

Another note I'd make is that I recall Fergus wrote somewhere that he preferred another one of his games (maybe [12x12] Gross Chess) to Eurasian Chess, though at least that one's currently on his personal Favorites list.

I am not sure though about future chess variants. What do you have in mind Kevin? I was thinking about your 3 games with FA, FH and WA. I though adding one strong piece on an 11x8 to Ballance things out. I think it would be an improvement. Or even a 12x8 or (a better in my opinion) 12x10. I'm particularly interested in adding an archbishop and a dragon king to the mix. Dragon horse and chancellor could be something, too. And want about the gryphon and manticore?

From the intro to (10x10) Centennial Chess, by formerly active CVP editor John William Brown:

"Such 10x10 games, often called decimal chess, have been the holy grail of game designers for ages. Many scholars felt that the move to a 10x10 board would be the next logical step in the chess's continuing evolution."

I have gone between liking 8 ranks in a CV (good for FIDE pawns' rules) and liking 10x10, though once again I think Mr. Brown is right about 10x10 being at least the next (if not final) step for chess' evolution - allows for more pieces in the setup (perhaps good for the final version of chess, if any possible), without the board size being too big, in case most people don't like games that might go too long.

Having thus arbitrarily narrowed the search for what a Next Chess looks like, I thought Game Courier might reveal some really good candidates (already) for a (10x10) Next Chess. Of course, something else 10x10 might come along eventually, but people have not made this argument explicitly - instead there seems to be a slight lack of interest here, as if future generations/elite chess players will decide, not us, so why should we even try to explore the question/lay groundwork? At least I compiled a preliminary list of 10x10 hits on GC.

I cannot recall what a Dragon King is, though I do know a Dragon Horse (RF). Aside from that, 11x8 strikes me as a board size that, since there is an odd number of files, not many may like it, though there was some popularity for Wildebeest Chess. The Gryphon is part of Daniel's 10x10 CV I included as one of my picks for a Next Chess candidate, so fine with me.

RF is Dragon King. Dragon Horse is BW.

It's morning here, so not too awake. Thanks for correction, H.G.

Having thus arbitrarily narrowed the search for what a Next Chess looks like, I thought Game Courier might reveal some really good candidates (already) for a (10x10) Next Chess. Of course, something else 10x10 might come along eventually, but people have not made this argument explicitly - instead there seems to be a slight lack of interest here, as if future generations/elite chess players will decide, not us, so why should we even try to explore the question/lay groundwork?

It is interesting to think about what might be the next step for chess; but, supposing there were one obvious choice, what would you do with it? It's interesting to try to find or design likely candidates, but to really become the "next chess" it would need to be promoted somehow. I guess the choice of board size and piece selection and other rules is limited by the need to appeal to existing chess players. Probably most, or all, of the games suggested are good enough in that way. What's really needed to replace chess isn't finding the right game, there are several of those already; it's getting enough of the right people, with the ability to promote such a game, interested enough in one such game to do so.

It would be better, I think, if people didn't think about chess as a specific game, but as a family of more or less related games. Being a good chess player wouldn't mean specializing in mastering one set of rules, but developing skills applicable to many different varieties and being able to adapt to different systems.

Well, I didn't mean to imply by my previous post there would be only one Next Chess - previous posts clarified a plurality may be fine, too. Old threads specifically about a Next Chess explored various types of CVs (e.g. Circular, Oriental, Ultima-like...) and which candidates there might be for each type, if the chess world ever had similar thinking to many of the denizens of this CVP website, when it comes to sampling from a variety of variants.

Once and if a Next Chess (one or more) are popular choices with at least a clique or cult-like following of people, promoting some or all of them is indeed the next challenging step - made easier with the internet these days, though. Some variants in the past were promoted fairly quickly, with no followers initially, even, but then apparently cooled out in terms of popularity (e.g. Chess960).

A question maybe of more interest to people on CVP website is, why haven't chess variants (in general or on this website) already been more than sporadically promoted, and why have relatively few, if any, really taken off to any degree? This returns to the main subject of this thread, if people already see the Next Chess topic as flogging a dead horse. Or would that also be flogging a dead horse, too?

Well, I didn't mean to imply by my previous post there would be only one Next Chess - previous posts clarified a plurality may be fine, too.

I didn't mean to imply that you implied that. I actually like the whole Next Chess idea, whether it's one game or several. Others might have more worthwhile things to say about it than I have.

This returns to the main subject of this thread, if people already see the Next Chess topic as flogging a dead horse. Or would that also be flogging a dead horse, too?

I don't see it that way. It's an interesting topic. Regarding your question, I have some thoughts about that, but I don't know much since I've never been involved in organized chess playing. It seems like whatever variants do achieve some popularity are very conservative, such as 960. Perhaps many who take chess seriously are interested in chess primarily for the shared experience aspect, or competition—thinking of chess as a sport more than as a game. Someone who thinks that way might perceive any suggestion of a significant change to the rules as promoting an entirely different game—a revolution rather than an evolution. Does that make any sense?

Definitely makes sense, to me. Almost all the seven 10x10 Next Chess candidates I picked for my own personal list resemble FIDE chess a lot. Caissa Britannia may be the most different of the bunch, with a different royal piece and some piece types that use complex movements - still, I thought it might seem a cool enough game that might appeal to all but the most conservative FIDE chess players (maybe most of them, unfortunately), assuming they ever think about the Next Chess topic.

My own 10x10 Sac Chess has been played over 60 times on GC, and I was tempted to include it, but so far I (the inventor) have been mostly one of the players of these game logs. There may also be imperfections with Sac Chess, that I think I now see, but I may be wrong. In any case a Next Chess ideally should have a lot of different playable opening sequences possible, early on in the move count.

Maybe it would be reasonable to try blocking this particular word or item in the settings of your advertising provider (I can't say exactly if an eBay account is required). I'm not sure if the CV staff can help in this situation, although this seriously seems to be quite a fun case.

Being based in France, I see ads from e-bay in French. But many are not related to chess. The reason is that "chess" is "échecs" in French, always at plural, with an "s" at the end. The word in singular, "échec" means "failure" in English. (It also means "check" which may complicate).

So, there several ads for books dealing with the failure of something, failure of education, failure of economy, whatever, but no relation at all with chess.

The search term has in fact been "echecs", but since you pointed it out, I did see some books in the preview for the books ad that used the world echec, such as L'ECHEC DE L'ISLAM. To fix this, I changed the search terms to "echecs -echec", and only books with "echecs" in the title showed up.

I have now modified insertlink.php to enforce the same rules.

A tournament would be nice. A longer one than usual maybe.

The classic answer was to hold a Design contest (the obvious themes in this case being Silver and/or the nr 25), but I'm not sure if we have enough people active here aþm for that to really work — istr the 2017 20th‌‐anniversary one never really went anywhere (though I suppose one could always try recruiting from other Variant fora…).

That said, a tournament would work too. Featuring games from throughout the pages' tenure…

But what was CVP in 1995-1997 then?

It looks like I had incorrect information on the page I consulted last night. So, the Silver Anniversary was two years ago in 2020.

That is sad, then.

I'd like it, but people do not seem interested at this time.

I was merging the functionality of canonicalURI, which takes an ItemID, into make_link_url, which takes a row, and I didn't do a thorough job of it. That is now fixed. Instead of duplicating functionality, canonicalURI will now use the ItemID to get a row with which it can call make_link_url. Having make_link_url call canonicalURI, as it was doing before, was wasteful, because it queried the database for a row it already had from a previous database query.

The Google Custom Search turns up this when searching for ‘ski‐rook’: https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/abc-chess.html

Apparently it contains a (leaping) ski‐bishop, though no actual ski‐rook. Only one I could find though. EDIT: Never mind, apparently it's just an example. And all the other usages of ski‐sliders or Pickets (and their compounds) seem to be lame. Which leaves only a game which I've had in mind but not yet got round to writing up, where a leaping‐picket+wazir promotes from a Phoenix/Waffle. And arguably (albeit failing the ‘straight line’ condition) the original GA unicorn/rhinoceros

I must admit I'm surprised these aren't more popular…

Where does the ski- name come from then?

The Heavenly Tetrarch in Tenjiku Shogi has ski-slide moves, but combines them with igui on the skipped square. The Wyvern in the Daring Dragons army of CwDA has a sideway ski-slide. (This caused a lot of trouble when programming it in the KingSlayer engine.)

‘Ski‐’ seems to date back at least as far as Jelliss' ’All the King's Men‘, which would seem to be a work about pieces but not an actual game (I can't seem to access it though, and fsr the link in the Alphab. Index is to https://www.chessvariants.com/link/). Idk if he got his terminology from another source himself

I knew I must have forgotten something — looks like it was indeed Tenjiku's Tetrarch

The correct external link page for All the King's Men is https://www.chessvariants.com/link/pcAlltheKingsMen (a semantic version of https://www.chessvariants.com/index/external.php?itemid=pcAlltheKingsMen).

There Jelliss references himself in a '73 The Problemist article, which somewhat remarkably are available online at https://www.theproblemist.org/mags.pl?type=tp. Clicking and searching through the issues, I find Ski pieces defined on page 387 of the November/December issue 285.

In English, skiing is a winter sport that involves sliding on snow with a long plank attached to each foot. The piece name probably refers to a ski jump, in which a skier goes down a ramp that sends him up into the air for a while before touching ground.

It worked before! Hopefully HG knows better!

It seems no one knows what happened. It worked before.

It seems the J/j piece is not defined as an imitator. In the Pre-Game code the legdefs array should be initialized for the Imitator as

1 -2  0  1   16777219 // joker(1826)
0
1 -2  0 -1   16777219 // joker(1832)
0

But instead of a -2 you now have a 1 there.

How was this Pre-Game code created? Did you paste an existing Interactive Diagram into the Play-Test Applet, or did you select the pieces one by one from the table?

To be honest I don't recall it is a long time ago. But it worked before. Anyway I'll make the change.

I have made the change and now it works! May I enquire what the -2 stands for?