Comments by GregoryStrong

Tony Quintanilla:

Yes, I am totally in favor of this.  In my games I try to use kibbitz
comments explaining the situation for the benefit of anyone who may
watching.  But it might be good to take a game of high-interest, like
Alice or Anti-King II, and find two players who are interest in
participating, and have a kabbitz free-for-all.  If interested parties
follow the game and make insightful comments, then the result would be an
truely expert-level game worthy of study.

Any other iterest?

Hmmmm... I'm not sure what to make of any of this, but my first reaction
is to dis-believe every word of it.  You claim it's older than the modern
(corrupted) form of 'common' chess, as you call it.  Funny how
Pritchard's Encyclopedia of Chess Variants (the CV bible) doesn't even
mention it.  Even if the rules are super-secret, as you claim, surely the
existance of such a game would be known to Pritchard.  But, rather, you
claim that orthodox Chess is actually decended from some super-secret game
pioneered by the English monarchy, when it's pretty clear that Chess
derived from Chaturanga from India.  You say that one of the reasons why
Stanley Random Chess has not gained any recognition is because (and I
quote):

the Simplified SR (Common) Chess community has long resisted the notion
that SR Chess is a predecessor that predates the more common and corrupted
form of the game.

Yup.  No disagreement there; I dispute the notion.

I could surely do Switching Chess; I think I've got a decent handle on
that game.  And I'm willing to try more than one game.  I'm not sure
that my experience with Switching Chess means I'm ready for Rococo,
though.  But, since Tony said he's willing to play Rococo, how about Tony
and George play Rococo (original version), and I play Switching Chess with
either Tony or George, or both.

However, please note, that I do consider a pawn in Switching Chess to be
worth somewhat more than 1.0, and would be weighing moves under that
hypothesis.  Switching makes pawns more mobile, and able to get to the
eigth rank in circumstances where they would otherwise not be able to. 
And, since pawn promotion is usually decisive in the endgame, I would
seriously consider trading a Knight for two pawns, if I felt that it gave
me some tempo.

No, a Knight can jump over pieces of either color.

Whether or not any of the historical stuff is real or not, it seems that
this is not intended to be a joke.  I recieved an e-mail from SR Chess GM
Gregory Topov, saying I should seriously consider the historical
authenticity of SR Chess, and directing me to the same links Peter Aronsen
described as 'a humorous series of articles.'  It may or may not be
funny, but it seems it's not intended to be.

It involves economic sanctions.  At the time, we had sanctions against
Yugoslavia, and any participation in any sporting events held there would
be a violation of those sanctions.  The idea being that the event would
draw tourists/money into Yugoslavia - exactly what the sanctions are
supposed to prevent.  And, as a US citizen, violation of US sanctions is a
criminal act.

It seems to me that this game has far too much power for this board.  The
more power you add, the more tactical the game becomes, and the less
strategic.  Some may like this, but by-in-large, I think people generally
try to maximize the strategic aspect of a game.

One quick example - Since all your bishops are arch-bishops, they can
change color.  One common strategic element to Chess is considering which
color your pieces are on, based on which color Bishop the opponent has. 
That element of the game is now gone.

I am confused about pawn promotion.  It says 'A pawn may only promote on
b8 to a knight, and only if a player has already lost a knight' ... What
if the player has lost no Knight?  can the pawn still more there?  If so,
what happens if a Knight is captured later?

Thanks!

Oh yes, this is a great addition for so many reasons...  Thanks!  I'm
especially pleased that pieces can now be represented by the correct
letters for the game, without requiring a proliferation of piece sets. 
The ability to use the plus-sign in the name for shogi pieces is a very
nice touch, too.

I would like to suggest something, though.  Right now, when moving a piece
you can either enter the piece type ('P e2-e4') or not ('e2-e4').  I
always do the former, because it makes it easier for me to keep track of
games.  Some opponenets do, some do not.  I would be nice if, when
entering a simple single-move, like 'e2-e4', it would automatically add
the 'P' or 'p'.  

Thanks for the consideration.  You have done a lot of good work on
improving the Game code recently!  I need to get to work on presets using
the new features for wildebeest chess, lions & unicorns chess, and others.

Does anyone happen to know what year this game was invented?  Amazingly
enough, there is no mention of FRC in Pritchard's encyclopedia.  I would
like to supply such basic information as year of invention for all games
supported by ChessV, so any information would be helpful!

Thanks,
Greg

I will be participating.  Any time controls are fine with me, although I
don't see why things need to be any different than the last one. 
Although I didn't participate, I can see how long it took to complete,
and it doesn't seem unreasonable at all.

Regarding Chess with Different Armies: This could be handled in a lot of
ways, but it what might make sense it to have each participant select
which army he wishes to play (out of the supported four) before the
tournament begins.  Army selections probably should not be made publicly
available ahead of time, or people might want to select late and try to 
meta-game with their selection.

I look forward to the start of this epic struggle, in which I will likely
be defeated by decisive force!  P.S.  I'll send the money shortly :)

George Duke: you are doing some cross-thread posts, and I am curious to
know what you are doing (so I can make similar posts.)  Is there some
cross-thread capability on this site, or are you just adding a prefix to
your messages?  And what's the difference between 'ABCLargeCV' and
'DEF,LargeCV'?  Thanks!

I had not noticed this page until George Duke's recent post.  I like the
alterations made here (at least in the first game.)  I will add it to
ChessV shortly, because it already supports Courier Chess, and this is an
easy addition.

I also like the 12x8 board, and suspect that it may be a great board for
CVs that has not been adequately explored.

As for the second game, I have not played a game with a crooked bishop, so
I can't speak to playability.  I can say, though, that I am not sure at
all how to program such a piece into ChessV in any 'good' way.  For what
I mean by good ways vs. bad ways, I will need to get into some detail about
ChessV architecture.  I will start this (complex) discussion on the ChessV
thread sometime in the future.

Ohhhh, I see!  I was thinking 'DEF' was short for Default... not letters
D, E, and F... :)  As a programmer, sometimes I read too much into things.

I find the Sissa incredibly confusing.  The Crooked Bishop a little less
so, but only a little.  The raven is straight-forward enough, and perhaps
similar to a Sissa in strength ...

From a programming perspective, Knight-riders are fairly tricky, and you
incur a significant performace penalty when you generate moves for them. 
Multi-path pieces incur a *huge* penalty in cost of computation, even well
beyond that of Knight-riders.

Ohh, I'm eager to see your entry!  I think that having the Grand Chess
army plus Omega Chess's extra leapers on a 10x10 would be a good amount
of material and an interesting piece balance for an exciting game that's
not too long.  Omega Chess just goes on too long without enough tension
...

Chessgi and Shogi have the highest resistance to computer analysis because
the drop rule gives them a HUGE branching factor, at least in the
mid-game, once several pieces are in-hand.  Most would probably suspect
Chessgi to have a larger branching factor than Shogi, because the Chess
pieces are so much more powerful, and thus have many more possible moves. 
I suspect that Shogi, however, actually has the larger branching factor due
to the fact that the board has 81 squares instead of 64.  In any case,
these games won't be 'digestable' by computers for several decades at
best, in my opinion.  They are both still easy to analyze very deeply in
the opening, though, with Shogi being a little more so, because pieces
aren't usually captured quite as early as in Chess.  Shogi is a wonderful
game to be sure; I haven't played Chessgi, but I suspect it is wildly more
challenging (for a human) to play than Shogi.

An interesting question would be how resistant to computer analysis
Marsellias Chess (or other double-move games) would be.  ChessV doesn't
support any double-move games at present, and I must confess that I am not
at all clear on how to program such a thing efficiently.  I have found no
technical writings on the subject.  The only computer program I know of
that plays such games is Zillions-of-Games, so the Zillions team might
well be the only people on the planet who know anything about it.  And
their solution wouldn't really be directly applicable, anyway, even if
they wanted to share it.  Although I know none of the technical details of
how Zillions is programmed, I am quite certain that it is of a radically
different design than ChessV.  This is primarily because the two programs
were written with a very different design goal.  Zillions is designed to
play as many games as possible (currently hundreds, if not thousands, but
many are played very poorly.)  ChessV is designed to play as many games as
is possible to play with a very high level of skill (presently about 35;
will be hundreds, but many chess variants will NEVER be supported.)  I
will investigate double-move some day, but I have about a thousand other
things I want to do first.

Now, the super-computer resistant game is Go, with 19 x 19 = 361 legal
opening moves ...  Ok, you can divide by four (at least) because of the
symmetry, but after a few moves, the board will be asymmetric, and the
branching factor will still be 300+!!!   Computers play Go very badly ... 
I got the best program I could get about 3 years ago and was able to beat
it, even giving it quite a long time (which is scarry, because I'm really
not very good; about 15 kue at best.)  I'm sure programs have gotten
somewhat better, but I know for a fact that there are literally thousands
and thousands of kids living in China/Japan/Korea less than ten years old
who can easily defeat the best technology has to offer.

This is a very interesting game. I look forward to playing it in GCT #2.

Below is a list of mobility values for all the pieces in Pocket Mutation, as well as a few Chess-With-Different-Armies pieces at the bottom for comparison. The 'average mobility' column is a Betza Mobility Calculation with a magic number of 0.7. This is probably the best estimation of the value of the piece. The second column is the average number of checks this piece delivers on an empty board without being counter-attacked. The third column is the average number of different 'directions' in which this piece attacks. The fourth column is the average number of squares attacked on an empty board.

Very nice! The author has done an excellent job of defining a Fischer randomization system for Capablanca's Chess (actually this piece mix goes back to the 1600s with D. Pietro Carrera -- see Carrera's Chess.) It is obvious to me that the design has been carefully considered from both a game-designer's perspective and a software developer's perspective.

I'm not sure I like the idea of renaming the pieces, though. There are already too many different names for these pieces, and I think the goal should be to standardize the names, and I believe Capablanca's names of Archbishop and Chancellor are probably the best choices.

Elephant (shogi Silver General):
Average Mobility: 3.94
Average Safe Checks: 0.00
Average Directions Attacked: 3.94
Average Squares Attacked: 3.94

Great Elephant:
Average Mobility: 6.94
Average Safe Checks: 3.00
Average Directions Attacked: 6.94
Average Squares Attacked: 6.94

War Elephant:
Average Mobility: 11.17
Average Safe Checks: 14.00
Average Directions Attacked: 5.75
Average Squares Attacked: 17.50

Mammoth:
Average Mobility: 11.06
Average Safe Checks: 13.34
Average Directions Attacked: 5.03
Average Squares Attacked: 18.38

Sorry I can't generate numbers for the Tiger; there are still many pieces
that ChessV can't yet support (in this case the Slip-riders, but in
general, any piece which changes direction during a move, like the Mao,
cannot yet be implemented.)

Fischer Random Chess has the 960 legal starting positions numbered, and has
the details on how to find a position from it's number, and how to find
the number based on the position.  Capablanca Random Chess could benefit
from such a system.  Besides making it easier to identify starting
positions, it would also solve Fergus' present dilema.  If a position can
be determined from a position number, all that would be required is
generation a random number in the valid range.

For a good description of how FRC identifies positions by number, see:
http://frcec.tripod.com/fischerrandomchessstartingpositions/

This is an interesting looking game.  I would have considered adding a
couple more knights in place of two of those gold generals ...  I am
concerned that the amount of power on the board will ruin the charm of
Shogi.  On the other hand, however, with so much power and
captured-pieces-in-hand, the game is sure to be a blood bath, and that
will give this game an excitement factor and charm all of it's own.

Here is the URL to a game courier preset which should play this game
correctly (should anyone be interested):

/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DGrand+Shogi%26settings%3DMotif-CSS

Crap.  I see no word whatsoever on the website about airing on BBC America.
 *sigh*   Oh well, at least there's E-mule...

Looking back, I noticed that I had not rated this game, so I now correct
this oversight with an 'Excellent' rating for my personal favorite
variant.

I hope that Ralph re-emerges soon, because I am concerned that his
inventions might become overlooked without his continued input.  But I
will continue to do what I can to promote CWDA, though, such as voting for
it's inclusion in Game Courier tournaments, and providing the best
possible CWDA support to ChessV, for analysis of different army match-ups.
 Sometime in the not-too-distant future I will provide a great deal of
information here on what I have learned from computer analysis of the
major CWDA armies.

Regarding the Pawn promotion rule:  I would recommend a change to this
rule.  The current rule says a pawn may promote to any piece in either
army at the start of the game.  Here's the problem:  What about the
match-up of Nutty Knights vs. Nutty Knights?  Since no piece in that
entire army may move backward faster than one square at a time, even if a
pawn promotes to a (very powerful) Colonel, it still probably can't move
back into the frey quickly enough, seriously decreasing the value of pawn
promotion.  I would suggest the alternate rule:  A pawn may promote to any
piece (other than Pawn or King) in the player's army at the start of the
game, or in the standard Orthodox Chess army (Fabulous FIDEs).  This
always provides the option of promotion to Queen.

To anyone interested in seeing the first episode of the new Doctor Who:
It is easy available on file sharing utilities (probably stolen by a BBC
Wales employee.)  I won't say anything specific about it, so as not to
spoil it; I will only say that the characterization of new Doctor will not
disappoint! And his companion is just about as georgous as possible.  Also,
the video quality of this avi release is outstanding!  'Rose' is the
episode title.

If the counsellor and counsellor's pawns both move forward two, I assume
that the Kings did face each other; otherwise White's councellor's pawn
would promptly be taken.

Oh, boy ... I see the ChessV implementation of this game will require
several changes.  Bleh.

Yes, I also think recognition of Shatranj should suffice.

Also, based on feedback received here and in e-mail, Chaturanga support
will be removed from ChessV, since not only are the rules unclear, but the
present implementation is really just Shatranj with rotational symmetry and
lousy pawn-promotion rules.  But, I will probably add support for the other
historical games described in Murray's text if they are described here, or
if I can find a copy in a local library.

Very interesting!

Half-golem capturing adjacent half-golem:  It says 'If a piece other than
a Golem captures a Golem, the capturing piece is removed from play, and the
Golem is replaced by a Half-Golem of the same ownership as the Golem.' 
But it also says 'A Golem or Half-Golem may always capture an adjacent
Golem or Half-Golem.'

What happens here?  And likewise, if a half-golem captures an adjacent
full-golem, is the capturing piece also removed?

I do not support any wiki idea, unless the inventor of any given game has
the control over that game's page.  And even then, I'm not wild about
the idea.

Here's an alternate idea, although it would require some additional PHP
code for running the site... Basically, the idea would be that any member,
not just an editor, would be able to upload pages (to a special directory)
and enter them into the database, but they would not be visible to the
community at large until an editor views the submission to ensure proper
formatting, good taste, etc.  If the editor approves the submission, he
uses the PHP system to 'activate' the page, which moves it to a
permanent directory of the editor's designation and makes it visible to
the world.  If there are problems, the editor rejects it with a note about
why.  Then the user may fix the problems and re-submit.  Yes, this requires
more of users who wish to submit in this fashion, but such people could
also enjoy quicker response times (assuming they get it right, of course,
but the same inventors tend to produce multiple games; the prolific
inventors will get good at it.)

I was not envisioning this new submission system automatically formatting
the text into the CVP template; that would be a lot of work to program,
and the standard outline, 'overview', 'rules', 'equipment', etc, is
probably not flexible enough to accomodate the wide assortment of games
being submitted.  It might be nice to expirement with someday, though ...


For a first version, I would do this: 
The first page takes basic database information about the game (name,
one-line description, number of ranks, number of files, number of cells,
...).  At this point I would have the database search, and reject the name
if it is a duplicate of the name of an existing game (including both games
already public and games still pending review.)  If all information has
been entered and there are no conflicts with existing games, then it
creates a sub-directory for it under the temp directory and instructs the
user to FTP upload the HTML page and any images to which it refers into
the newly created directory and click 'OK' when finished.  When the user
clicks OK, he is given the URL to the newly uploaded page, and asked
whether to proceed with the submission or upload again (in case there was
a problem.)  When the user indicates he is ready to proceed, an
email is sent to the editors notifying them of the new submission (and
giving them the URL.)  The editor then uses a PHP page to accept or
reject.  If accepted, the editor specifies the category of the game
('large variant', 'historical variant', etc.) and the program will
then move the game's directory to the appropriate permanent location.  If
rejected, the editor types a description of what is wrong, and the user is
notified, and can FTP up improved versions.  I would suggest the editors
NOT fix mistakes in the submissions; reject them with explaination and
make the users fix them.  This way the people who submit games get good at
it, (after a little practice,) and it would require very little time of the
editors.

I really like this.  It adds an element of chance that so many other board
games have, but the probability of disappearance is low enough that you
can still play a game without worrying about it too much...  It's Chess
with a little extra element of risk.  Also, having the Bermuda Chess Angle
in the center of the board is nice, because it helps to equalize the value
of the squares.  The squares around the perimeter, which are normally
weaker, now have the added advantage of safety.

The number 10 is not all that prominent, and as a contest entry, that is a
slight weakness, but as a game overall I still rate it 'excellent.'

P.S.  I am taking Statistics for Engineers this semester, so that may be
coloring my view of the game a little.

Very nice!  You were able to submit an update with the user-submission
system, and the editors had no problem moving the existing comments to the
new page.  It is indeed a new age at the CVP!

The idea of Decima is very nice.  The number 10 is included in an
interesting way, via the point values, and these values also have a very
nice way of helping to level the value of the pieces.  What the material
value of the pieces should be relative to the pawn would be very difficult
to determine.  But, this helps to add interest to the game ...

Here's what I noticed:
I checked the 'using HTML tags in Text Box' but it didn't stick the
first time I submitted; the page didn't have proportional fonts.  I had
to use the link to go back and edit the page, and when I did I noticed
that that HTML tags box wasn't checked.  So I checked it and submitted
again, and it worked correctly.  I think that there is something wrong
with that that check-box such that it doesn't take the first time you
submit.

It runs on my computer.  As far as I can tell, it is just an interface; no
computerized opponent.

Wow!  It's hard to say anything about this game but 'Wow!'  
The sheer scale of it has an audacity and boldness that must be respected.
 This game will not be playable by computers until quantum computers become
a reality, and probably not by humans until we've had a few thousand more
years of evolution.  Still, this page made me laugh a great deal, and the
extensive use of the number ten cannot be denied!

Mark:
Your idea is very clever, and deserves an 'A' for inginuity!  This will
allow a person to play synchronous chess against Zillions so long as
computer is White.  But there's a problem... When the computer considers
what move to play, ('thinking',) it is recursively looking at hundreds
of thousands of sequences of move-counter-move combinations to determine
which is best.  During this look-ahead, whether Zillions is White or
Black, Zillions is playing both sides and uses perfect information.  The
way Zillions decides on moves will not change from a non-synchronous game
(and I'm pretty confidant that sometimes different moves are better in 
synchronous chess; and if not, then what's the point?)  So, essentially
what you have is a way for a person to play synchronous chess with the
computer, but the computer is still just playing chess.

Derek:
It is almost certainly possible to write a program to do it... (not that I
know how to go about it...)  But the suggestion you make of a computer vs.
computer synchronous match has an additional nasty complication that is
really hard to explain, but I will give it a shot.  
To have computer vs computer synchronous, you need not one capable
program, but two seperate (and different) programs.  Here's why:  say you
try to do it with one program... You give it the ability to handle the
hidden information by not including any code that looks at variables that
it's not supposed to.  Ok, so far, so good...  So, now it must try to
'guess' what the other player is going to do.  Chess programs all do
this by assuming that the opponent will make the best move he can.  In
this case, the 'best move he can' determination is being made by the
program!  After thinking about it, the program is going to determine that
the best move is always the actual move!  So, you've slowed it all way
down by making it think about the same things over and over again, but you
haven't changed its play at all!  It's still just playing regular Chess
against itself... Wierd, huh?!?