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Comments by DerekNalls
Corner Chess. Fast-paced variant without pawns.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Calculation of Piece Values
. Link to an essay on attack values, material values, relative piece values.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This work has been substantially revised and expanded recently to 29 pages. Please check it out again.
[Odd, my previous message was moderated. This one was not. Is there a bug possibly? Comment deleted as irrelevant.]
various remarks concerning draws description- Symmetrical Chess Collection http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/descript.pdf relevant excerpts p. 26-28 (first paragraph) ___________________________________________________ Note- Some remarks are admixed in context with the description of a game (Hex Chess SS) while other remarks are directed in a purely general manner.
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Chess Variant Pages Rating System. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]For that matter, any rating scale at all can offend game inventors (including the 4-tier one we are using right now). Still, we need a rating scale. It can be comparable to helpful advice. I don't think adjectives should be used at all (including the ones in our current system). When someone's game receives a below-average rating, bad words trigger people to get upset and feel insulted moreso than numbers.
Calculation of Piece Values . Link to an essay on attack values, material values, relative piece values.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]At 29 pages currently, I am still refining the model. Accordingly, I have recently started calculating material values for chess variants (other than my own) having fairly well-established (hopefully), published calculations or estimates of their relative piece values. I am having difficulty finding suitable games for comparison. Thusfar, I have made calculations for only 5 games with somewhat satisfactory results. I need more test cases. Any recommendations would be appreciated. Hex Chess (square-spaced) http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/values.pdf Fischer Random Chess (including Chess) http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/values-chess.pdf Omega Chess http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/values-omega.pdf Capablanca Random Chess http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/values-capa.pdf Wildebeest Chess http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/values-wilde.pdf
Recognized Chess Variants. Index page listing the variants we feel are most significant. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The opening setups, piece moves and rules of the game are all well-explained. Many of us are so experienced at playing our favorite games, the relative piece values (where known and published) are at least, roughly obvious to us, consciously or subconsciously. However, this can be a maddening problem for newcomers- the difference between playing with a clear, tactical plan and playing blindly thru tactical chaos. For several games for which relative piece values are fairly well-established, they should be published upon their respective game pages. That is how Wikipedia does it!
Large Chess ZRF 
. ZRF for Capablanca's Chess plus variants: Bird's, Aberg's, Grotesque, Univers, Embassy, Janus, Archbishop, New Chancellor + more.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The next time you update this master file ... A worthy inclusion would be a game invented by David Paulowich that I believe is entitled Outrigger Chess. It is only described in an article by Betza listed on the CV Pages as 'Outrigger Chess'. The unique properties of this Capablanca variant have been discussed recently at the Yahoo group Chess Variants. Its opening setup is a piece of cake.
Chess. The rules of chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]material values- all pieces Fischer Random Chess (including Chess) http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/values-chess.pdf
Fischer Random Chess. Play from a random setup. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]material values- all pieces Fischer Random Chess http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/values-chess.pdf
Capablanca Random Chess. Randomized setup for Capablanca chess. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]material values- all pieces Capablanca Random Chess http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/values-capa.pdf
Shatranj. The widely played Arabian predecessor of modern chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Grand Chess. Christian Freeling's popular large chess variant on 10 by 10 board. Rules and links. (10x10, Cells: 100) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Omega Chess. Commercial chess variant on board with 104 squares.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Wildebeest Chess. Variant on an 10 by 11 board with extra jumping pieces. (11x10, Cells: 110) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Capablanca Random Chess. Randomized setup for Capablanca chess. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Thank you for publishing my results. Doing so implies that you have some trust in my calculation method even as it differs from your own and the English-German language barrier creates apprehension. We are all trying to reach the same destination (accurate relative piece values). We just have different reasons for taking different roads in pursuit of it. Unfortunately, the subject is just too complicated to be approached exclusively from math and geometry as applied to games. Where value judgments are necessarily required (for instance, in determining the details of a formula and what 'looks right' based only upon estimated material values of pieces in well-established games that seem to work well), philosophy becomes involved. Thereafter, the dangerous line between 'the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics' and 'the unreasonable ineffectiveness of philosophy' (to quote Dr. Steven Weinberg) is approached. For what it is worth, your set of material values for pieces in CRC fall into the safe, flat scale between the relatively compressed scale of Trice and the relatively expanded scale of Nalls. So, if there is anything at all reliable within the work of any of the 3 of us, then your calculations for pieces in CRC are either the most accurate or the 2nd most accurate.
optimized chess 8H x 10W http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/opti/
Index page of The Chess Variant Pages. Our main index page.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]A link to SMIRF, developed by Reinhard Scharnagl, should be included under 'computer resources: programs that play chess variants'. SMIRF (English description) http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachsmirf_e.html
SMIRF. Program that plays various 8x10 chess variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This is a request for future versions of SMIRF. It relates to the aforementioned topic (under CRC) of the advantage of white. Originally, pawns did not have the option to make a first move consisting of 2-spaces forward (as well as 1-space forward). Of course, there are historic chess variants upon rectangular boards which require original pawns to be used instead of modern pawns. So, for this single reason, some of these games cannot presently be played using SMIRF. In the chess computer age, it has been proven that the 2-space forward move of pawns amplifies the first-move-of-the-game advantage (for white) in chess and many related games. Therefore, those modern inventors (of games similar to chess) who actually care about their games being fair and stable would be wise to use original pawns, instead. I predict some will. Accordingly, it would be desirable for the SMIRF program to accommodate these 2 sub-types of pawns within the piece sets available for use in games played upon 8H x 8W or 8H x 10W boards.
Capablanca Random Chess. Randomized setup for Capablanca chess. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Out of the 3 options offerred for castling in SMIRF, I chose 'symmetric' castling for Optimized Chess 8H x 10W. This destroyed my plan to compare the strengths of SMIRF and Gothic Vortex III at this game by letting them fight it out at 3 minutes per move since the latter program exclusively supports traditional or 'normal' castling as exists in Gothic Chess. It is particularly gracious of Scharnagl to support symmetric castling within SMIRF, esp. since he has stated clearly that he personally prefers normal castling. To date, I suspect that a good reason to prefer symmetric castling has not been explained. Any unique game is singular in nature, regardless of whether it exhibits an east-west symmetry or asymmetry. However, unlike E-W symmetrical games which always exist as 1 unified, opening setup, E-W asymmetrical games are split so they always exist irreducibly as 2 mirror-image opening setups which can be transposed into one another. Obviously, neither one is any more or less proper than the other. Of course, most inventors only offer 1 of these 2 mirror-image, opening setups as the asymmetrical game and most players, on the rare occasion that a choice between 2 is offerred, will always prefer to learn using just 1 of them. Ideally, the king would be perfectly centered by E-W measure so that castling would naturally be the same between the 'Mirror I' and 'Mirror II' variants of Opti Chess. Unfortunately, this is obviously impossible as the '10W' in the game title gives a strong clue. An odd, NOT even, number of files must exist for it to be possible to perfectly center any single piece E-W. The opening setups in Mirror I and Mirror II have the 2 rooks balanced perfectly, equidistantly, symmetrically E-W from the center of the board. The opening setups in Mirror I and Mirror II have the king as close to the exact E-W center of the board as possible which is unfortunately, the line dividing the 5th and 6th files. Consequently, the king rests on the 6th file square in Mirror I and the 5th file square in Mirror II. With normal castling, the king and rook will end-up on destination squares that are asymmetrical from the exact E-W center of the board within both variants AND on destination squares that are different when comparing both variants. With symmetric castling, the king and rook will end-up on destination squares that are symmetrical and identical within and between both variants. Essentially, a simple average of the results of normal castling for Mirror I & II is taken which yields whole numbers. By contrast, one can wonder (with dark humor) how the person(s) who established the standard for normal castling kept from going crazy when you realize ... In deciding exactly where to drop the pieces kingside and queenside, in turn, they had to decide whether it was more proper to round-off exactly 1/2 square's distance to zero square's distance or 1 square's distance. Even Dr. Mark Thompson could not answer that one!
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