Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Any thoughts on the next featured variant? My suggestions are Chu Shogi and Eurasian Chess. I come up with these by looking at most played games on game courier, skipping all those that have previously been featured, and skipping one four-player game and two that are very similar to other featured games, and that gets us to most-played-on-game-courier #13, (at 32 games each,) Alice, Chu Shogi, and Eurasian. Alice being previously featured, I suggest one of the other two.

Let's try to get this started again with a nomination process in place. For the time being, I have featured Eurasian Chess, because that's what the last nominations were for. For the nomination process, a game meeting the criteria mentioned on this page may be nominated by someone other than the inventor. If it gets seconded by another non-inventor and approved by an editor without being vetoed by any, we can queue it up to be featured. If this gets especially active with multiple nominations, we can use voting or editorial discretion to choose what to feature.

Not sure if it qualifies (the page for it is fairly short), but I'd nominate Seirawan Chess (if not to be only as a featured game then as a recognized variant also):

https://www.chessvariants.com/link/seirawanchess

Not sure if it qualifies (the page for it is fairly short)

At present, we don't have a proper game page for it, and a link page doesn't count. Maybe in the future when we do have a game page for it. Also, it would be good to have a programmed Game Courier preset for it. The current one is not programmed.

Note that when I linked to 'Featured Games' from e.g. the Eurasian Chess game page header, I got a massive list of games that apparently weren't intended to be listed:

https://www.chessvariants.com/index/mainquery.php?type=Game&orderby=LinkText&displayauthor=1&displayinventor=1

Note that when I linked to 'Featured Games' from e.g. the Eurasian Chess game page header, I got a massive list of games that apparently weren't intended to be listed:

Okay, I've modified the link.

Ok, I'll go first.  I nominate Cylindrical Chess.  It has been around for probably two hundred years, has been a problem theme for over a hundred years, was played in NOST, and has logged 30 games on Game Courier.  It has been supported by ChessV for at least 15 years.  And, perhaps most importantly, it has that ususual characteristic of making a single, easily understood change to the game of Chess that leads to something completely new.

I'll second Cylindrical Chess. I made a Game Courier preset for it, and it can be used with circular graphics. That or the photo I added to the page can be used to feature it on the home page. For now, I have featured Eurasian Chess on the home page, and we can do the same with each featured variant.

I have made a proper rules page for Seirawan Chess, and I've started working on a Game Courier preset for it.

I always thought of Cylindrical Chess as the very first concept to appear in someone's mind when it comes to the idea of inventing a CV.

I think it is a very bad thing to have yet another classification for recommending chess variants, which to an uninitiated person would mean exactly the same as the 'recognized' label that we already have. I would be very hard pressed to explain to someone what the difference between a 'recognized' variant and a 'featured variant' is. Perhaps they are elected through a different mechanism, but who cares?

If we think there is a need for drawing attention to certain chess variants, we should simply revive the 'recognized' program. Otherwise we will just be promoting chaos. From what was chosen as 'featured' so far it looks like we will just be replicating the recognized list all over again.

BTW, the list of 'recognized' variants given on this page does omit many of the recognized variants (e.g. Makruk, Chu Shogi).

The problem with Featured Variants is the fact that this page wasn't updated for more than a decade, so it may be counted that everything is started from scratch. It is actually a good idea to keep promoting playable and interesting CVs in the described format, especially the forgotten ones. The name can cause some confusion though, so I would assume that 'Variant of the Month' can be a more straightforward one.

As a compromise between European and American times, I will make Cylindrical Chess the featured game for March late tonight, which will be a bit late in Europe and a bit early in America.

what is the meaning of a featured game?

From Merriam-Webster, featured is the past tense of feature by definition 3a: "to give special prominence to". So, a featured game is one we are giving or have given special prominence to. As long as we can be bothered to keep it up, we will mention a particular featured game in the header of each page and include a picture of it on the home page. Since we prefer to feature games that are worthy of the honor, the list of featured games can provide people with a list of Chess variants worth knowing about and trying out.

We could conceivably wrap the recognized variants up into featured variants. The concept of a recognized variant is more vague. The concept of a featured variant is more concrete, because it refers to a specific, observable action we have taken.

To me, Recognized suggests games that have achieved some notable popularity at some time, while Featured would include games that are considered to be deserving of recognition.

To me, Recognized suggests games that have achieved some notable popularity at some time,

That's hard to measure, has vague boundaries, and has nothing to do with our actions. So, if we just focused on which games are recognized, we would be trying to determine what is so instead of making something so through our own actions.

while Featured would include games that are considered to be deserving of recognition.

Yes, another reason to focus on featured games rather than recognized games is that is allows us to spotlight a game for its quality and not just for its popularity or historic value.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I already covered this here.

It is maybe a semantic question. What do you mean by "featured" exactly?

I already answered this here.

Is that "having distinctive aspects", "having something special" which is rather neutral, or is that bearing some positive appreciation, meaning that this game is better than others?

None of those. See my earlier answer to your question. However, there are criteria that a game must pass before being featured. These are described on this page.

I agree with Fergus, but as a more general answer may I say that I believe this has value.  It gives us another way to highlight games that the community feels has value, in temporary way (as opposed to making something Recognized, or whatever, that declares value in a more permenant way).

We all know the issue -- there are a million chess variants (figuratively, and maybe literally) and how do we -- the CVP community who know about these things -- call out those worthy of further attention?

The procedure we are following makes sense to me.  Let us give it a try.  It seems to be working.  Eurasian Chess and Cylindrical Chess are both worthy of notice for many reasons.  If the Featured Variants offers no value, it will go away.  If it creates problems, it will be refined or it will go away.  This forum is an evolving entity.  We do not need to answer every question before anything is done.

April is almost upon us. Does anyone have a nomination for a game to feature in April?

I suggest Shako

Shako sounds well!

Okay, we'll feature Shako in April. It has been programmed for Jocly, Game Courier, ChessV, Zillions-of-Games, PyChess, and Ai Ai, and it even has an Interactive Diagram on the page. Its games on Game Courier go back to 2006, and it has been played every year on Game Courier since 2015. On a personal note, it is one of the first Chess variants I learned about after getting involved with this site, as it was in the Large Variant contest of 1999, and David and I were trying out variants in that contest together.

It's already the last day of April. Does anyone have a nomination for a game to feature in May?

Metamachy is quite popular, and looks as though it has yet to be featured (based on this and this).

Since no one has seconded Metamachy, and it doesn't seem to have a Zillions-of-Games file yet, and the currently featured game has the same inventor, I will not feature it just yet. Without any other nominations, I will pick an already recognized variant that has not been featured, and that variant is Wildebeest Chess, whose page I just updated last week.

I have ZoG for all my variants. I have to find how uploading them on this site. Many of my variants are also implemented on AI AI, thx to Eric Silverman.

It is of little use to ask such questions one day in advance, when there is only a slim chance anyone would see it in time at all, and even less to fix something on the presentation if that would be needed. Deciding it one week in advance seems more reasonable.

I can already suggest a few candidates for the coming months; in particular some variants for which there exists a community that is actually playing it, and for which equipment can be ordered. Which is such a remarkable feat in itself that I think it deserves some attention:

• Superchess: many wooden pieces in Staunton style can be ordered, and there a yearly championship for over-the-board play is organized.
• Paco Shako: a specially designed plastic set which allows pairing of pieces on a single square can be ordered; there also seems to be a site where people can play it on-line.
• Musketeer Chess: many beautiful fairy pieces are available in plastic, such as Lion, Camel, Rhino. Dragon...

As for historic games:

• Tenjiku Shogi: a large Japanese games from the Edo era, for which there is a yearly correspondence championship
• Chu Shogi: a variant that already exists since 1350 AD, for which there still exists an official association in Japan, who also have a website for on-line play (I think).

As a recent invention that became popular in a very short time on chess.com, there is

• Duck Chess

One of my personal favorites is, remarkable because of its complete asymmetry:

• Spartan Chess

Metamachy is also a good variant, but I agree that we should not have too many variants by the same inventor shortly after each other. But we should certainly keep it in mind for the future.

I have to find how uploading them on this site.

We have a file manger for that. It's the same one you use to upload graphics, and it will accept .zip files.

So, i will just put the zip file on the page dedicated to the same game. I have nothing to do on the page dedicated to Zillions, right?

No, we have separate pages for Zillions-of-Games files, as this makes it easier for someone interested in them to search or browse through them. Start to post a page like you would to post a game, but choose the "Create Zillions Item" option.

There seems to be some inconsistency, or at least something that is very confusing. When I go to a page of one of the variants mentioned here as a link, this displays a black 'attention box' at the top mentioning it is on our list of 'featured games'. When I click the link that box refers to, I get to a page which appears to be an index page with an alphabetical list of (presumably) 'featured games'. Most of the variants mentioned in that list are also labeled there as 'recognized'.

The point is that there seems to be no relation to that page, and the one we comment on here. Spartan Chess is mentioned as a 'featured game', but it is not mentioned here as being a featured variant. Chu Shogi is labeled 'recognized', but it is not mentioned here as ever having been recognized. (What makes this extra strange is that we used to have no article on Chu Shogi here, but just an external link, until I created one (in 2015), and I think I did that long after the 'recognized' program had been terminated.)

Is the 'featured chess variants' page incomplete, and are their time periods in which variants were chosen to be labeled as 'recognized' or 'featured game' that are not mentioned here at all? Or is 'featured chess variant' something different from 'featured game'?

BTW, I think that, even when an organized effort to choose a 'recognized' variant of the month is no longer done, the consistency of this site requires us to label obviously important (historically, or because of a large player base) chess variants as 'recognized'.

@HG: it is even more than that. The black 'attention box' you mention doesn't exist for Cylindrical C. and Shako.

The table "Recognized Variants of the Month" looks strange with 2006 at left end and 2001 at right end. I would have set it the other way.

Some comments from my side on the potential candidates for future Featured CVs:

• Superchess: there are (too) many games named "Superchess". You mean Superschaak obviously. I see it more as a open concept rather than a specific game. It remains that the author (Van Haeringen) sells very nice fairy pieces, in wood, excellent size and high quality.

• Musketeer Chess: also good for the concept and the availability of the plastic pieces. However, the page describing it here is of a very low quality and has never been corrected and improved. Second, if Musketeer Chess is recognized, it should be mentioned Pioneer Chess from Mats Whiter which precedates it and which is almost the same game.

• In my recent book ("More Chess and More Than Chess") just published, I described several CVs, in addition to my own creations, that could be good candidates: Expanded C., Sac C., Opulent C., Elven C., Gross C., Hectochess, Enhanced Courier C.

Indeed, I meant Superschaak, which in the English section of its website is referred to as Superchess. (It seems even the website has two domain names, superschaak.nl and superchess.nl.)

I don't think that being an 'open concept' should be a problem. 'Chess with Different Armies' is also an open concept, and it has been awarded the 'recognized' label.

That the description on this website might be sub-standard should not deter us from an intention to award the featured status to a deserving variant. It just means we have to improve the presentation, of push the author to improve the presentation, and perhaps provide some computer opponent if there is none. This is why I was pushing to do these nominations one or two weeks in advance, so that there is time to make the necessary changes and preparations before the variant actually gets featured.

The variants from your latest book are all good candidates. But they do belong to a family of closely related games, which was the theme of the book. So also here I suggest that we should not pick too many of those in a row, but regularly also pay attention to variants that involve more exotic rules that put them outside the scope of your book. (Such as double moving, atomic captures, immobilizers and move inducers, location-dependent moving, type-change on capture, capture-the-flag winning condition, asymmetry...)

As a specific candidate for next month, I propose Duck Chess. This has a description here with an Interactive Diagram; it can be played on-line at chess.com, there is a WinBoard/XBoard version that supports it, and several engines that can be loaded in WinBoard/XBoard to play it against the computer.

BTW, there appears an attention box on that page that says it is written by its inventor, but this is not true. I don't know what triggered this.

Perhaps I should also have mentioned as a future suggestion:

• King of the Hill

This is another variant that can be played (and is reasonably popular) on chess.com, and a good representative of variants with an alternate winning condition.

I think there can be another approach. Popularity is a questionable criterion in most cases because people tend to play what they were given by a search engine, the inventor's activity to promote a CV or his initial popularity like in the case of Chess960. Chess in its structure is closer to a formal science, so, the function here prevails over the form, and it would be a valid point to explore the less showcased specturm of the medium which can provide the reader with an efficient or original idea. By saying that I mean this as another possible approach, that does not exclude others. There are plenty of hidden gems on this site, some of whom didn't even get a single comment, it would be better in my opinion to promote them for further discussion instead of established CVs.

Among relatively known ones, I personally would vote for Modern Chess and Singularity Chess.

The page for Singularity Chess here is completely empty, though...

Do you mean this page? It was probably dedicated to a different game that shares the same name. The tags mention that it is multiplayer, while the original Singularity is played only by two players (https://www.printables.com/model/71969-singularity-chess-board).

Well, this was the page that is in the alphabetical index under the name Singularity Chess. If the variant you mention is a different one, it does not even have a page here.

There seems to be some inconsistency, or at least something that is very confusing. When I go to a page of one of the variants mentioned here as a link, this displays a black 'attention box' at the top mentioning it is on our list of 'featured games'. When I click the link that box refers to, I get to a page which appears to be an index page with an alphabetical list of (presumably) 'featured games'. Most of the variants mentioned in that list are also labeled there as 'recognized'.

Indeed, the link in the attention box is just the mainquery with listprimary=1. "Primary" is just a flag on an item in the database, and I'm not sure we've always used it consistently; they show up at the top of search results lists, and so have been Recognized variants but also just archetypical games (of the presumably searched category), and a few in that list I don't know why they're marked as such at all. There is a separate flag for Recognized variants; is there one for Featured variants (I don't recall and can't look right now), or should there be?

BTW, there appears an attention box on that page [Duck Chess] that says it is written by its inventor, but this is not true. I don't know what triggered this.

That is triggered by having Author and Inventor the same personid. When a member submission is made, both fields are filled with the submitter, and an editor needs to change the Inventor if that assumption is incorrect. I've done so for Duck Chess (adding a Person listing for Tim Paulden in the process).

Chu Shogi does not show up at the top of the alphabetical index page for 'Ch', but it is on the 'featured games' list.

Hm, maybe I was confusing Primary with Recognized? Then what does Primary do? (Note that Links can also be Primary, but that's entirely separate.)

It seems none of the recognized variants is displayed at the top of the alphabetical index pages anymore.

Then what does Primary do? (Note that Links can also be Primary, but that's entirely separate.)

In the past, search results would show only primary links if there were too many search results, and you would be provided with links to subcategories that might not have too many search results. Since I did not consider this a good way to provide search results, I recently changed this when I updated queryinc.php. Search results are now limited to 500 at a time, and if there are more, you get a link to another page of results. You can still see a list of primary links if you want to, but they no longer show up by default. All that usually happens is that the name and description appear in boldface.

Primary links are not synonymous with recognized variants or featured variants, though at one time, a link to the games marked primary was misleadingly called featured. Currently, the notice about the featured game gives a link to this page, which should help encourage people to post nominations in a more timely manner.

It seems none of the recognized variants is displayed at the top of the alphabetical index pages anymore.

Also, in the past, primary pages would appear in the search results ahead of the complete search results, and the complete search results would appear only if there were not too many. Since I modified queryinc.php to always show the actual search results, the need to show the primary pages separately was not as great. I also thought it could make the search results confusing by leading people to not look at the complete search results. So, primary pages no longer show up separately unless that's what you specifically choose to search for.

Well, I think that was a very bad idea. Having the primary results first was very useful, as most of the time I would be looking for one of those. So please re-instate this feature.

Among relatively known ones, I personally would vote for Modern Chess and Singularity Chess.

If you want to nominate games, please include a link to each game's page on this site. After all, the first requirement for a game to be featured is that it have a page on this site. Once we see the page, we can determine whether it meets the other requirements.

Having the primary results first was very useful, as most of the time I would be looking for one of those.

The primary pages still show up in the main search results, and they are in boldface so you can recognize them more easily. I see no need to list them separately before listing them again in the full search results.

Except that when I search on the first two letters the list of search results is often very long, so that the boldface results are not visible, and I have to scroll a lot to get to them. And if I search for Chu Shogi that way, it would not even be on the page, and I have to click a 'next' button first to get at it.

That sucks.

And it did not suck before...

I don't think we've yet answered "What is a Primary variant/page?"...

@HG: I was suggesting these variants just to put some names on the list, on the long run. I agree with you to have variety in the type of chess variants to be recognised. Duck Chess is a very good suggestion.

I would like to ask one or more of the editors to look over David Paulowich's Opulent Lemurian Shatranj for consideration as a featured variant. For obvious reasons, I cannot suggest it, but the way the game is constructed with pairs of opposing pieces of different values gives this game a quality that most games don't have, including at least most of mine. I can be accused of being prejudiced, so if no one likes this game of David's, then please consider other of his games.

Hi Joe! At present several of my games are being torn apart and completely rebuilt. Maybe they could be considered around 2025. I have three Featured Chess nominations to make at this time.

The ShortRange Project made a big splash back in 2006. Putting 32 variants in a Zillions of Games 2.0 package will definitely attract attention. Since Joe keeps praising my closely related game Opulent Lemurian Shatranj, lets add that one to the list.

If the impact a game can potentially have on the general chess community is a factor, then Tiger Hunt (1996) is worthy of consideration. This reworking of a classic introductory game for children uses exactly one-half of a chess set, making it a great way to stretch your resources. Schools usually have a surplus of inexpensive boards printed on stiff paper - parents at home can make use of any checkers game lying about.

Saving the best for last, there is Ralph Betza's Sort of Almost Chess (1995). Playing every game with a White Chancellor and a Black Queen creates an entirely new chess experience. Pawn promotion for both sides would include both Queens and Chancellors. To continue my comment of [2023-02-25], we could always hold a contest to choose a more interesting name, like Carrera's Revenge. Chess has the reputation of being a game that you can learn to play in ten minutes and take a lifetime to learn how to play well. This is another game that deserves the same reputation.

... while the original Singularity is played only by two players (https://www.printables.com/model/71969-singularity-chess-board).

The Singularity you refer to is indeed a very interesting game, and perhaps the most elegant design of a board with an irregular topology. I would second its nomination for being featured, except that we cannot feature a variant for which we don't even have a rule-description page. But perhaps I should make one.

The board is very interesting. The way it is represented, with the circles inside the rectangular grid, is probably not the best way for getting intuitively clear moving. The problem is that the cell corners where a circle touches a line (so on the mid-line of the board) suffer a degenerate distortion, making two different directions coincide and the angle at the corner collapse to zero degree. There are other representations that do not suffer from this.

The singularity is created by taking a 12x6 rectangular board (of which two 2x2 corners are cut away) and fold it back on itself to connect the left half of the upper edge to the right half. If you do that with a sheet of paper, it warps it into a cone, where the singularity the top of the cone. Projecting the checkered pattern on a plane perpendicular to the cone axis (i.e. looking at it from a large distance above the top) would produce a pattern where all corners keep a finite angle.

The 12x6 rectangular board can even be mapped analytically (locally angle-preserving) way by consider it the upper part of the plane of complex numbers, (with the singularity at 0), and square those numbers to make the grid fill the whole plane. This increases the size of the squares as one moves away from the singularity, though.

It is even possible to completely 'rectify' the board, by duplicating it and join it to a rotated version of itself. So that a 12x12 'four-player' board is created, with 2x2 areas cut away at the corners. The extra condition is that the position should always be point symmetric around the singularity. (So that the same player controls armies that start opposit to each other, and in each turn makes the mirrored move in both armies.) This is similar to representing a cyclindrical 8x8 board by a 16x8 board, requiring the right half is a replica of the left half, to get better visualization of what goes on at what would otherwise have been the wrapping edge.

This shows that the rule for diagonal moves through the singularity is really an irregularity (allowing the Bishop to change its shade): one would have expected the diagonal to continue into the mirror quadrant, and the move thus to effectively bounce back from the singularity. But instead it bounces off from the singularity at a 90-degree angle, onto the other main diagonal of the 12x12 board.

I agree that the way the bishop can change its square color through the singularity is inconsistent, as it actually should go in the reverse direction. There can be interesting variations on the subject, some of which you just described. The simplest one can be to cut the board in half vertically, and then join it again by its borders. As a result, there will be no full U-turns, and the bishop will have five directions of movement in the board's central part, like in usual three-player chess made of three 4x8 board parts, which share somewhat similar geometry.

As a minor observation, it can be pointed out that this variant has natural reverse symmetry, so the black king and queen should switch their places to preserve their initial square colors. It also can be noted that the a and h pawns can capture each other from the initial position, so, there must be an artificial restriction to stop them from that.

Duck Chess for June?

Let's round up the nominations:

David Paulowich nominated Tiger Hunt and Sort of Almost Chess. His nomination of his own Opulent Lemurian Shatranj does not count, because inventors cannot nominate their own games.

H. G. Muller has nominated Duck Chess, and Jean-Louis Cazaux has seconded it.

Jean-Louis Cazaux has nominated Superschaak, and the games mentioned in his recent book More Chess and More Than Chess Expanded C., Sac C., Opulent C., Elven C., Gross C., Hectochess, and Enhanced Courier C. H. G. Muller has said to him

The variants from your latest book are all good candidates. But they do belong to a family of closely related games, which was the theme of the book. So also here I suggest that we should not pick too many of those in a row, but regularly also pay attention to variants that involve more exotic rules that put them outside the scope of your book.

I'll take this as a second for these games.

H. G. Muller has also nominated Superchess, Paco Shako, Musketeer Chess, Tenjiku Shogi, Chu Shogi, and Spartan Chess. Assuming that Superchess is Superschaak, Jean-Louis seconded it.

Edward Webb nominated Metamachy.

Duck Chess for June?

Because we have not provided much support for this game on the Chess Variant Pages, I would like to hold off on that. I am completely unfamiliar with this game, and I have not found any record of games played. In the meantime, there are some other games that have received a nomination and a second.

I'd like to second Gross chess!

I made an overview of the nominated variants, indicating which support they have on CVP. The fav. column indicates the number of people that have favorited it (discounting the inventor). The feat. column indicates whether the variant was already featured before (which I think should disqualify it).

An 'ic' in the column for Interactive Diagram means a Diagram exists in the comments to the article, which could easily be moved into the latter.

Superschaak / Superchess and Monarch only exists here as a book review. It appears that Tiger Hunt is also invented by David himself, so that the nomination probably should not count.

Since it is 'late in the day', I think our only options for June are pages that do not require any work. A negative point for Metamachy is that we already featured a very similar game from the same inventor last month. Of the remaining variants Expanded Chess seems to have the best support on CVP and largest popularity here. It also has an excellent rule-description page. Due to the participation of two bent sliders it is sufficiently different in character from the recently featured variants. Only minus is that there is no Jocly implementation for it. But very few variants have one.

Hi. I also support Expanded Chess. I also love Skica from Daniel Z, but it is more recent and may probably wait in the queue line.

I am also very curious about Duck Chess. Is there a GC available to play it? If yes I would try it. If others do, maybe it could be nominated in one of the next months.

Concerning ZoG, I have made files for many variants. That of Metamachy exists since 2012. I have it for all of mine, and many others of similar types. One day, I will take time to clean them up and upload them here. I'm quite busy righ now so I can't do it for tomorrow :=)

Gross chess seems to be a good nomination. I may also vote for Ralph Betza's Chess on a really big board.

The feat. column indicates whether the variant was already featured before (which I think should disqualify it).

None of the games you marked as featured are mentioned on this page as having been featured. They are all marked in the database as being primary links, but that is not the same thing as having been featured. So, it should not disqualify them.

Well, when you go to one of these articles, a big black textbox at the top says:

This is one of our Featured Games. Click the link to check out our others.

So you'd better do something about that, then...

If we are going to re-feature primary links, Chu Shogi would be the obvious choice for June: it is favored the most by far, and has a ZoG page and a Jocly page in addition to what the other vcandidates have.

So you'd better do something about that, then...

For now, I have just added a false to the condition to keep it from showing.

Aurelian Florea wrote:

I'd like to second Gross chess!

Max Koval wrote:

Gross chess seems to be a good nomination.

Since these two additional seconds for Gross Chess came in today, it seems to have the most support, and I have made it the featured variant for June.

That is not how it works for other variants that have a Zillions implementation. These have a separate page for that, which can be made through the usual article-submission system.

I don't really see the benefit of that system, other than that it can be seen already in the index for which variants a Zillions implementation exists. (But this is more a result of the low quality of the index pages.) But is seems more important to have unified treatment of all variants, even when that treatment itself is rather silly.

Guys, this is still confusing for me. What is the difference between a Featured Variant and a Featured Game?

If there is one, it would be great to explain it somewhere, preferably on this page for Featured Chess Variant (similarly to what is done for Recognized Variant of the Month).

Also the criteria could be discussed. Why having one on ZoG entry now that this program is no longer supported and cannot run on many computers? And many CV do have their ZoG since long time, just they are not on the CVP but are on ZOG web page. And for years, so this is not relevant at all in my opinion. Why not considering other criterias, internal to CVP such as Favorite Games and Top Games on Game Courier?

Why not considering other criterias, internal to CVP such as Favorite Games and Top Games on Game Courier?

Because that might not result in the desired outcome, obviously.

As it was noted, I think that probably the best way to explore this feature is to include little-known and original games for further discussion and possible improvement, maybe alongside common CVs. For example, Chess on a soccer ball by David Cannon.

Would Opulent Chess be a good one to feature in July? It has been played on Game Courier every year since 2015, it is supported in both ChessV and Zillions-of-Games, and it is one of the more favorited games. Also, it is already marked as a primary link, and games marked as primary have also been described as "Featured Games" even if they haven't been featured on every page for a month. To resolve the discrepancy between these, I would like to get those games featured in the sense described on this page, or, perhaps in some cases, unmark them as primary.

Opulent Chess is now the featured variant for July, 2023. Would someone who has appropriate pieces for this game be willing to set it up and take a photograph to use on the homepage? If I do it myself, I'll have to substitute Leopards for Lions.

It is a good choice as far as I can see!

If you want feature a large Shogi variant, Chu Shogi is a prime example.

• It has been played on Game Courier a lot, and was the dominant game in Japan for centuries.
• It is playable several other programs as well, including LiShogi.
• The page itself, provides a good example of formatting that is less image-heavy while still meeting the high bar set for the formats of featured variants, adn received editorial approval a long time ago.

The only thing left is for people other than me to nominate and second it (and to not be vetoed).

If you want a choice that is less intimidating, Seireigi is another great pick, as it only changes the promotions of the back-rank pieces in Shogi while keeping everything else the same. Although it is a standard-size Shogi variant, and is still quite new, it does meet many of the requirements already.

• It had been played on Game Courier (albeit only a few times).
• It has also been programmed in Ludii. The piece names in Ludii are slightly outdated as of right now becaue the process of adding and updating games is quite slow, but all the moves are up-to-date.
  • Furthermore, it can even be played over-the-board using a Shogi set. A special PDF file has been made for this purpose.
• The article itself is a good example of how to craft a well-formatted article that is a bit more image-heavy, and has received editorial approval, albeit only recently.

The only thing holding Seireigi back from being eligible is that this post is from its inventor, so it needs to be nominated and seconded (and not vetoed) by people other than me.

I still consider that it should be paid attention to two internal criterias of the Chessvariant pages:

1)The Top Games on Game Courier https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/listgames.php?max=200

2)The Favorite Games by the readers of this website https://www.chessvariants.com/index/favorites.php

I second the nomination of Chu Shogi.

Chu Shogi is now the featured variant for August, 2023.

That should give visitors plenty to "Chu" on. #BadPunNoCookie

Wouldn't it be an idea to include some small picture in this black box announcing the featured variant? The small black box with the announcement is easily overlooked. We could for instance show the part of the board that contains the pieces for one player in the initial setup, to avoid it takes up too much space. Usually that would just be two or three ranks.

Well... sometimes four ranks, occasionally five... and then there are the 3D variants.

But I support H.G.'s suggestion, in principle.

Well, showing the setup would just be one thing we could do. But we would not have to stick rigorously to that in cases where it is inconvenient. We could also just show the image of a representative piece (e.g. a Lion in case of Chu Shogi). The point would be to attract attention. Not to convey information.

Yeah, that's why I supported in principle. And I think the policy should be exactly as you just described.

Looking at games that have already been nominated and seconded, I'll make Expanded Chess the featured variant for September, 2023. It is the most favorited of games that have been nominated and seconded, and it has a good web page. I considered Sac Chess, which I'm more familiar with and would personally like to feature, but I think its page has some more room for improvement.

Fergus Duniho wrote wrote on 2023-09-01 UTC "Looking at games that have already been nominated and seconded, I'll make Expanded Chess the featured variant for September, 2023. It is the most favorited of games that have been nominated and seconded, and it has a good web page. I considered Sac Chess, which I'm more familiar with and would personally like to feature, but I think its page has some more room for improvement."

I have substantially edited the Sac Chess Rules Page (especially the Notes Section). See if you like it better now, Fergus.

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.'

I experimented a bit with an image in the featured-variant notice, to attract more attention to it. Expanded Chess still seemed small enough to show a complete single army. I suppose I could even have cut off the 4th rank (of which I left enough to indicate it is empty), as a rank of Pawns would already be assumed to be the most-forward populated rank.

Please tell me what you think!

I think it looks great!

A modest suggestion.

If it is about promoting a chess variant using images, wouldn't it be better to use animated GIFs, like, for example, the one I insert below made by Hans Bodlaender in 1998 to illustrate The Bishops Conversion Rule?

I certainly know that everything editors do is voluntary. But I can't help but ask, is it very difficult to create an animated GIF? Or is the web space too "expensive" to not be able to make a square banner instead of a rectangular one?

If the reason is that the suggested banner would be unsightly to the taste of those who are promoting variants (since it would look grotesque), that's fine... I haven't said anything!

I once made an animated GIF (see left) following instructions from the internet, and it was not terribly difficult, provided you used a drawing program that supported this function. But you first have to create an image for each position in the game, so that would take two orders of magnitude more work than creating a static image of a single position.

But for presenting chess games I think animated GIFs are a very poor tool. They run through the game at a fixed speed, which is too fast to notice anything of interest, and annoyingly slow for the uninteresting part you have to go through to reach what you really want to see. For Chess games I think it is very important to be able to control the stepping, so you can view each position for the time it deserves.

Therefore I think it would be much better to use an Interactive Diagram configured as game viewer, with its own 'button bar' of control buttons put somewhere on the page. This is much easier to create too; you just have to create the Diagram once, and add a parameter moveList=... to it with all the moves of the game. Such as shown at the end of this comment. (Refresh browser cache first!)

But in the case of the Featured-Variant box I don't think this would be a good idea at all. Showing a whole board would make the box too large, (I think showing an entire 3-rank camp is already stretching it), and showing part of the board of an animated game seems pointless. Then it would not do more than having something flashing there. And I guess most people would consider this annoying rather than attractive. There is a fine line between being noticeable and being a distraction. Text can only be understood if you first focus your attention on it, so that it can be read. So those who would not systematically scan all elements of the page (which includes scrutinizing all adds...) easily miss it, no matter how important the message might be. Unlike an image, which you process intuitively whenever it is in your field of view, in parallel with whatever else you were looking at, and gives you a subconscious clue as to whether you would want to look at it. Motion, however, draws your attention away from what you were really interested in all the time.

I have a policy against animated ads, because they are too distracting.

For some reason, this diagram is making an error message "ambiguous illegal move 3. Wf4" to pop up on my screen.

Refresh your browser cache.

The problem occurs because the betza.js script did not keep move lists per Diagram. So when I posted a Diagram with a move list, it gets confused, and tries to perform the moves in Mirko Mirko's Diagram on the same page. (Which of course leads to an illegal move rather quickly.) I patched it now such that it remembers which Diagram contained the move list, and only loads the game into that one. But you have to flush the old version out of the cache first.

My remark is probably silly. Everytime I flush my browser cache I'm loosing all the pwd I have saved. Is there a way I may do to avoid this, I have the same popup "ambiguous illegal move 3. Wf4" but I would like to avoid the pain of entering all pwd etc. just to remove this popup?

In FireFox I flush the cache by refreshing the page with the Shift key pressed. This only deletes everything associated with the current page.

Most browser algorithms always load the page with the URL that you are requesting, and rely on cached data only for the files it links to (like images, style files and scripts). So if the above is not possible for you it might work to directly access the betza script through the link

http://chessvariants.com/membergraphics/MSinteractive-diagrams/betza.js?nocache=true

The latest version should contain the word listGame .

That does seem to have worked. :)

Yes, thanks HG

I am a bit unhappy with the way we select featured variants, because it seem to lead to a presentation that is very much biased towards what we could call "Chess with Alternative Armies": variants that differ from orthodox Chess by the participation of a view pieces that move with slightly different leaps, perhaps on a somewhat larger board. Now I admit that these are the variants that I like best too, but the world of chess variants offers so much more.

Perhaps we should reconsider the idea that we should feature mainly variants that are already popular on this site. Our regular visitors will already know those, and others will be guided to those easily enough by other mechanism (such as the Our Favorites menu item, or the Game Courier logs). If the featured variants do exactly the same thing, it really serves no purpose at all. I think it would be much more useful to feature variants that involve some rather original concept.

And then I don't mean "wow, this has a piece that makes a (0,3) leap", but rather pieces that explode on capture (Atomic Chess), need to be captured twice before they disappear (Golem Chess), involve move induction (Knight Relay Chess), can swap pieces (Odin's Rune Chess), morph into other types (Kyoto Shogi, Bishop-Knight Morph Factor), have moves that depend on location (Elk Chess). Also multi-move variants (Marseillais, Chieftain Chess), multiple royalty (Extinction Chess), 'capture the flag' winning conditions (King of the Hill, Racing Kings), alternative winning conditions (Three-Checks, Suicide), neutral pieces (Duck Chess), incomplete information (Dark Chess), irregular board shapes (Balbo's Chess), irregular tilings (Singularity Chess). It seems to me most of these peculiarities have no chance at all to be in any featured variant, the way we go about it now.