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Favorite Games. Chess variants favorited by our members.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Kevin Pacey wrote on Sun, Jan 27, 2019 09:08 AM UTC:

I've recently made two lists for the Canadian Chess Federation (CFC) Discussion Board website, in a thread I started there about chess variants. The first list had a lot of relatively popular chess variants played in the world at large on it, from shogi to Seirawan Chess (similar to the list I recently gave in another CVP thread, i.e. Ideas for future of chess variants). I also gave a dozen chess variants seperately as examples of distinctive, weird and wonderful CVs, which I thought all seemed fairly playable, yet generally not having too many rules or highly unusual board shapes (as taken from my own long [approx. 130] CVP list of personal favorites). This list of 12 may seem too arbitrary, but I thought I'd share it in case it inspires, or has some value otherwise that I didn't anticipate. Anyway, if I one day could choose to rank some of my favorites as higher than the rest, perhaps this bunch would be close to the top, regardless of whether I currently play all of them well, or at all:

1. Alice Chess;

2. Altair;

3. Backlash;

4. Chaturanga - Four Kings - Double Mate;

5. Chess with Different Armies;

6. Clockwork Orange Chess;

7. Knightmare Chess;

8. Kriegspiel;

9. Maxima;

10. Pocket Mutation Chess;

11. Rococo;

12. Storm the Ivory Tower.

P.S.:

From the Recognized Variants thread, on the topic of Primary Items (from an exchange I had with Fergus that I'd forgotten - may be a good idea to post this in the present thread, too):

Fergus Duniho wrote on 2020-04-03 EDT 'That's something that David Howe instituted so that the most important pages would be at the top of the list when listing search results. I think he largely included the Recognized Variants, though some other things are also included. It might be a good idea to replace Recognized Variants and Primary Items with Featured Games and Featured Pages, the former being a subset of the latter. Featured pages would be ones that we want to draw greater attention to or that we expect users would be looking for more. These could include links to games that enough of us think highly of, links to well-known or popular games, and links to commercially available commercial games. These could be featured at the top of search results, as Primary Items are, but referred to as Featured Pages instead. Also, they could be a bit more dynamic than Recognized Variants, meaning we could drop something from the Featured Pages, such as a commercial game no longer being made, or a game that has been reevaluated.'


Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Mar 26, 2018 05:40 AM UTC:

I did see myself in the end :)! Sorry :)!


Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Mar 26, 2018 05:38 AM UTC:

Thanks, Ben. Yesterday I have favd 44 games. I don't see myself in the list but thanks :)!


Kevin Pacey wrote on Mon, Mar 26, 2018 01:16 AM UTC:

Fwiw, here's the Average Game Ratings page, as linked to on the CVP main page under 'Which [variants] are the best?' I'm not absolutely sure, but I think this might be a relatively new page as started by Fergus:

http://www.chessvariants.com/index/avgratings.php


Ben Reiniger wrote on Sun, Mar 25, 2018 11:13 PM UTC:

(I've moved this thread under the Favorites page.)

The vast majority of people favorite only a small handful of games; these are the "gold hearts" games for those users.  For more granularity, there's the rating system in the comments, though we've mostly dropped support for that as a recommendation system due to disuse. (edited; see Kevin's next comment)

The more complicated we make the process, the more there is to quibble about specifics of implementation.  I like the Favorites list (mostly) as it stands.  I would consider developing a more complicated system, but would want it to be separate from this page.

A bit of information: at present, here's a table of how many favorites people have:

numfaves COUNT(PersonID)
1 20
2 12
3 8
4 6
5 3
7 5
8 2
9 2
12 4
13 1
15 1
16 1
17 1
18 3
44 1
127 1

The average number of favorites (among those with a positive number) is 7.2.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, Mar 25, 2018 08:30 PM UTC:

First it seems that for some reason I had butchered this thread's title :(! Sorry! Any ideea how to change it?


Kevin Pacey wrote on Sun, Mar 25, 2018 06:51 PM UTC:

Regarding the Favorites list, I think some weighting is effectively accomplished by the sheer number of people favouriting a game, and also if one notes if an inventor is favouriting his own game that's in question (if so, this would presumably mean less in the eyes of at least some CVP members or visitors).

There is also another sort of form of weighting done, in effect, by whether people's favourite variant(s) make e.g. the Recognized Chess Variants list, the Top 50 played Game Courier games list, and possibly other lists (as of now, this might include whether a variant is given as a Primary Item, as chosen by editor[s], for the main alphabetical index). All this depends how much people are willing to look at all these other lists outside of the Favorites one, though.

Fwiw, I once suggested to Fergus in a Comment here that for the Favorites list, perhaps favourited games might not be shown on said list until they were favourited at least twice, to keep the Favorites list reasonably short (at least for a while).


Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, Mar 25, 2018 05:23 PM UTC:

Hello everybody.

Today I had browsed through all the articles on this website choosing my favorite game. For now, as the size of this community is not that impressive it is probably an ok system.

First things first. I don't intend to help with the implementation of all this. But I'd really like the discussion had.

Anyway for the future I'd like to raise some issues.

1. It does not seem to me apropiate that all favorite games share the same level.  There are definitely games among my favorites that I like more than others. A neat propose I think it would be to have gold preferences scoring 4 points, silver preferences scoring 2 points and bronze preferences scoring 1 point.

2. Next, I don't think this system makes the favorites enumerating (the hearts) a valuable commodity. After a certain lowest threshold (in the 4,2,1 system according to my calculations 80 points should be fine, as I have roughly 40 games which in average should worth 2 points, with maybe a distribution of bronze hearts> silver hearts> than gold hearts, by a healthy margin), the number favorites should have a lower impact if you gave an overall score higher than the average score given by all users, and a higher impact if you gave an overall score lower than the average score given by all users. Also the impact of someone "hearting" the games should by influenced by other factors like writing recognized scientific articles on the matter, writing a popular computer program for CV, having a reasonable distribution among your bronze, silver and gold hearts, or even being an older member :)!

Hope to hear from you guys!

Good luck :)!


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Sep 28, 2017 05:11 PM UTC:

Similar artists is a misnomer, but that's what they call it. It is based on listening habits, not on comparison of musical styles. For example, t.A.T.u. is, musically speaking, more similar to other Russian pop artists, but because it is the most popular Russian pop group, its similar artists list also includes several western pop stars or groups, while if you pick out some other Russian pop group, the similar artists list will be predominently Russian.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Sep 28, 2017 05:02 PM UTC:

As a test, I copied one of your interactive diagram comments into the editor window, and when I scrolled the text, the window did resize. I then capitalized the class name of the textarea to match the class defined in the CSS file, and then copied the same comment to the editor window again. This time, it did not resize as I scrolled up and down.


Kevin Pacey wrote on Thu, Sep 28, 2017 04:47 PM UTC:

I'm intrigued by how 'similar artists to a particular artist', re: songs as looked at on last.fm, might be applied to chess variants, if you're thinking along those lines, Fergus.

As far as 'recommendations based on the favorites of a particular user' goes, I'm guessing that could result in something like the hit-or-miss results produced by data mining on behalf of advertisers on the internet (who then flash their recommendations to you while you're online somewhere). As a rule such advertising is for products that don't quite interest me, though these may come close sometimes.

So, as far as 'recommendations based on the favorites of a particular user' goes, it's my guess it may be good enough just to let people pick from straightforward popularity lists on CVP (like the 'Our Favorites'), although I suppose one more list of recommendations, based on data mining, won't confuse too much and may even be helpful at times when one is looking for new variants to play.


H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Sep 28, 2017 03:49 PM UTC:

Please note that the comment editor, which was already quite awful to start with, now is close to unbearable. Because it reformats the entire page in reaction to the length of the lines that are displayed in the edit window. So if you scroll through your text and encounter a long line, the page formatting jumps between one where you have a left side bar with advertizement, with the edit window right of it, and formatting where the same advertizement is in a header with only white space to the right of it, and the edit window below it, far out of view. When you then scroll the entire page to get the edit window in view again, to continue scrolling the latter, and you get to a place with short lines, the edit window jumps back to besides the ad at the top of the page, etc.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Sep 28, 2017 12:36 PM UTC:

The ideas I have brought up are for scripts I have not yet written. I have mentioned them here, because it is within the subject of the favorites data, not because it will be done on this page. If you look at last.fm, a site that uses data on what music people listen to, it includes neighbors (people who listen to some of the same music), similar artists to a particular artist, and recommendations for a particular user. I want to write scripts that will show closest neighbors (people who share the most favorites with you), games most favorited by people who favorite a particular game, and recommendations based on the favorites of a particular user.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Sep 28, 2017 12:01 PM UTC:

This is an edited test comment. Comments can now be edited.


Kevin Pacey wrote on Thu, Sep 28, 2017 01:43 AM UTC:

I still am unable to edit any comments I post. Regarding my previous post, I meant to edit it to exclude one of option b) and c) since they would in effect be the same.


Kevin Pacey wrote on Wed, Sep 27, 2017 11:30 PM UTC:

Hi Fergus

My first impression is that your ideas thus far for change related to the topic of games to recommend to viewers might be too complicated for most folks to appreciate, at least at not much more than a glance (which seems desirable to me, as far as assessing a given game's popularity or potential goes, given that there's so many of them).

One thing you might change is the way the 'Our Favorites' CVP list of games is handled, if you're all concerned members will begin to favourite too many games, making that CVP list perhaps undesirably long (such as the Game Courier list of All Games presently definitely is, in terms of going through all of it thoroughly). Right now there's something like 70+ games chosen by 2 or more members, which is a nice list length IMHO.

Games favourited by just 1 member (a huge number right now, too) might not be shown on the 'Our Favorites' CVP list a) until they are favourited by more members, or b) until games favourited only by the inventor are favourited by more members, or c) unless they are favourited only once, but by someone other than the inventor (this last option may not prune the CVP list enough even right now, though, IMHO). A potential long-term drawback of this recommendation of mine (whichever option of a), b) or c) might be selected) is that eventually the 'Our Favouites' CVP list may grow too long anyway, in which case other way(s) might be considered to prune it.

Something else you might want to consider when making recommendations is the Game Corier Rating(s) of a given member who favourites a particular game(s).


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Sep 27, 2017 06:45 PM UTC:

Another idea came to me while I was running in place, listening to Rush. I could take the average of two percentages. For two members, A and B, these would be Shared Favorites / Total number of A's favorites and Shared Favorites over / Total number of B's favorites.

There are three main things to calculate.

  1. Similarity between two members
  2. A ranking of games derived from the favorites of members who like the same game
  3. A ranking of games derived from the favorites of members with a non-zero similarity to another member.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Sep 27, 2017 03:10 PM UTC:

I am thinking about how to use the favorites data for making recommendations. This might be broken down into different things to calculate. One is similarity between the favorites of two members.

The simplest way is to just count up how many games they have favorited in common. But this doesn't take into account the favorites they don't have in common, and it allows somone to become someone else's most similar neighbor by favoriting lots of games. So I want a method that takes into account both the number they have both favorited and the total number of games favorited by either of them.

One simple way to calculate this would be as the total number of games they have in common divided by the total number of games they have each favorited. This would count each game only once, giving a percentage of how similar two lists of favorites are.

A variation on this method is to count a game each time it is favorited. This would double the numerator and increase the denominator. In this case, the denominator would be twice as large only if they favorited all the same games. This would count games they have favorited more than games only one has favorited.

Another option that would do this even more is to square the games they have in common for the numerator and use the total number of games they have each favorited in the numerator. This would amplify the significance of having favorite games in common.

What do the mathematicians here think?

 


Kevin Pacey wrote on Wed, Sep 27, 2017 01:36 AM UTC:

A quick check revealed that all my submissions (including presets) seem to look okay now, including the diagrams. Thank you, Fergus.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Sep 27, 2017 01:20 AM UTC:

The drawdiagram.php script is now fixed. I have been combing through error logs for things to fix, and sometimes fixes might inadvertently break other things. So I rely on the users to be my eyes and tell me what is wrong with things I might not be looking at right away. Thanks for mentioning this.


Kevin Pacey wrote on Wed, Sep 27, 2017 12:42 AM UTC:

I cannot seem to edit my previous comment, as I get a message when I hit preview. I meant to add that I'm all thumbs when it comes to computers.


Kevin Pacey wrote on Wed, Sep 27, 2017 12:16 AM UTC:

Probably an independent issue, but looking from my best machine (my laptop), I've noticed that I do seem to have a problem with all the diagrams now being empty of pieces in almost all the submissions of my 17 invented games (including most of the 10 of my own that were also given as presets). The diagrams are showing as their normal arrays of coloured cells, it's just they are empty of pieces. That's in spite of not trying to edit them myself, at least since the formatting for CVP website submissions was altered, well after I made my submissions. If you've got the time to do a quick fix for me Fergus, please do so. I forgot what you did in quick fashion the last time this sort of thing happened. In any case, if I need to do it myself, it may take a long time as I'm fairly busy this week.

Kevin


Kevin Pacey wrote on Tue, Sep 26, 2017 11:14 PM UTC:

Thanks Fergus. I've now got about 45 favourite games, and the website didn't seem to have any problem with such a large number of them being selected by one CVP member.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Sep 26, 2017 08:17 PM UTC:

I have removed the restriction on how many games you can favorite. You can now favorite as many of our games as you like.


Honeyn EL-HAMIANI wrote on Tue, Nov 22, 2016 03:14 PM UTC:

After Indian chaturanga, Chess was deeply changed in Persian and Arab world. I do not see any mention about that game which rules are very close to the one we all know. In Spain, Arabs -where remained 8 centuries, the new rules were set !. It has been added:

- pawns first move can "jump" two cells,

- the 2 Rocks,

- and the prise-en-passant.

The Arab/Persian chess is called Old Chess.

Also, there is a variant game famous in Ethiopia, a very old country of Chess called Senterej (see wikipedia).

....


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