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Comments by MarkThompson
84 Spaces Contest. 84 Spaces Contest begins![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Can anyone tell me how many entries there are? I just submitted one, and I'm curious how busy I'm going to be with evaluating the others. I mean, if there are 3 others that's very different from if there are 30 others.
I vote for 'no pressure on Fergus' regarding deadlines. My experience is that the first year of teaching (really the first few years) is VERY time consuming. You'll be doing very well if you can keep up with the Art Bell show. But as for keeping the authorship of the entries secret -- er, I didn't see any reason to keep the game I submitted secret, and haven't done so ... If there's a decision that we should, I don't see how I could follow it now. Also, I don't think I see the purpose of such a rule.
Those are good points, I hadn't realized such problems had arisen in the past. Hopefully the rules as given this time will help. I suppose we have to figure that any publicly-judged contest will have somewhat limited significance. How would this work, for future contests: in order to submit a judgment you also have to submit the ZSG of one game that you completed (or played till one side resigned, or till both sides agreed to a draw, as long as those decisions appear rational). I would consider playing at least one game to be the minimum effort required for passing a judgment. Or would others disagree?
I guess Fergus must be pretty busy, as he would be starting a teaching job, so I'm wondering about possible work-arounds. What would the other contestants say to this: could we all agree to a certain date, and on that date we each go to the Yahoo! Chess Variants group and post a message describing our entry. I suppose we could also upload ZRF's to the file-download section, if we have them (or even HTML's). That way we could all start evaluating the games, and get a headstart for that great day when they appear here.
Yahoo, here, whatever, I'm just anxious to read about the entries and play them. I suggest another venue because (presumably) these pages would have posted them by now if they were able to, and we don't know how long the wait will be. I don't see why we'd need anyone's permission to post material we wrote ourselves. Nor would posting it on Yahoo compromise our right to our work, since Yahoo can't legally claim proprietary rights over material that someone else composed. Copyright doesn't work like that. You can REGISTER a copyright on someone else's work -- sure, the copyright office will be glad to take your registration fee and put your material on file -- but if the author can prove it's his work, your copyright would have no force.
I agree. Any departure from the contest format would have to be unanimous.
Can anyone at least give us a rough count? Are there about 10 entries, about 20, about 40? Maybe even an exact count?
Tree garden chess. Large chess variant on 10 by 10 board with 4 by 4 area missing from the middle. (10x10, Cells: 84) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I've been working on a ZRF for Tree garden chess, and I think I have everything working except the castling / championing / centauring. William, do you have Zillions of Games? If so, when I finish it I'll send it to you if you like, and if you approve of it you or I could send it in to be posted.
Question on castling (and championing and centauring): You can only castle if your 'king has not been checked at any previous time in that game' -- by 'previous' do you mean to exclude the current time? That is, are you allowed to castle while in check in this game? There is nothing in the rules prohibiting moving the king across an attacked square while castling, so I assume that's legal here.
84 Spaces Contest. 84 Spaces Contest begins![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Tree garden chess. Large chess variant on 10 by 10 board with 4 by 4 area missing from the middle. (10x10, Cells: 84) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]> My intention was that castling, championing and centauring would be as near as possible in meaning to castling in ordinary chess... The hardest thing about coding the rules for castling etc. in Zillions is the stipulation not found in ordinary chess, 'that the king has not been checked at any previous time in that game.'
I'm very glad to hear that! As you see, the ZRF is now finished, sent, and posted.
Tetrahedral Chess. Three dimensional variant with board in form of tetrahedron. (7x(), Cells: 84) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Have you actually built a board? I haven't done that yet myself, so yours would probably be the first one in existence. I'm inclining toward plexiglas levels, held up by threaded metal rods (with nuts to hold the boards in place), and a wooden base, probably made from a round cutting-board. I might want to make a set of squat chessmen somehow too, since standard chessmen seem too tall for a convenient 3-D game. They force the levels too far apart.
As of November 30, 2002, there is a new and corrected version of the ZRF available for download. If you downloaded the ZRF before that date, the version you have has a bug (sorry!), which causes it to allow the Dababante to move past an enemy piece on a square that it could have captured. As described above, every line of squares on this board alternates between two colors, and the normal move for the Dababante is to those squares that share the color of its starting square; and it can reach those squares even if a piece (other than a Pawn) intervenes on one of the squares of the other color. BUT, it CANNOT continue past a piece occupying a square of the same color as its starting square -- a piece on a square where its own motion would 'touch down' (possibly to capture the piece). This is what the earlier, incorrect version of the ZRF allowed. My thanks to Dan Troyka for figuring out how to fix this error in the ZRF. By the way, the new version also has a modified board image, making it look more like the 3-D levels are separated by struts instead of attached to upright wooden planks. Dan and I both prefer the new image.
84 Spaces Contest. 84 Spaces Contest begins![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]There are a lot of promising games in this contest. Would anyone like to play some of them by e-mail? If there are Zillions implementations, we could even arrange a time to play online in real-time, assuming the players aren't behind firewalls that prevent Zillions from connecting. I was able to use Zillions last I checked, though I recently got DSL and don't know whether that will affect it. The judges will have plenty of work ahead of them to give adequate play-testing to all of these. If a lot of us volunteered to play the judges in e-mail games, would that be permissible and helpful? I'm assuming that none of us who entered games would be playing our own entries, and that we would all be good enough sportsmen to play seriously in whatever games we were assigned. Also I'm assuming that there would be at least 5-10 contestants participating in such a program, besides others, so that each judge would have several opponents in any game.
I rather agree with the concern that 11 games is a lot to judge in one round, and I'd like to suggest that even the 8 or 9 option could be improved upon. How about having 6 groups of judges, each judging either 5 or 6 games, and the 3 'complicated' games David mentions go to the groups judging only 5 games? Then each group could choose the 2 or 3 most favored games, and the winners could be redistributed to a second round of judging.
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]John, Do you mean the second rank would be - C N B Q K B N M - ? And this King's leap of three squares, I suppose that's a one-time move? Is it limited any other way, for instance does it have to be made along a rank, can it be made while in check or over checked squares, etc.?
Sometimes I've idly wondered whether the Knight should simply be replaced with a piece that jumps further, such as a Zebra (a (2,3) jumper). The rationale would be that a piece that travels faster should be more relevant to play on the decimal board. Of course, that would violate the spirit of Grand Chess, in Freeling's idea of having a piece for each 'basic move' (N, B, R) and each combination of two basic moves (N+R=M, N+B=Q, B+N=C). Anyone have any thoughts on whether 'Zebrine Grand Chess' would be worthwhile?
84 Spaces Contest Jury members. Please consider becoming a judge for the 84 squares contest![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]It's mid-May now, so perhaps the prophesied finals list can be expected shortly? No pressure, just interested.
More Shift Square Chess. Shifted Square Chess needs more than one page to explore its possibilities. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Actually Milennium Chess is on a 15x8 board. There's only one rook in the middle; apparently having two rooks in the center was too much concentration of power. The object is to capture one enemy king and checkmate the other. I've found it enjoyable, and the vinyl board is quite nicely made.
Doublewide Chess. A discussion of the variant where two complete chess sets (including two Kings per side) are set up on a doublewide board. (16x8, Cells: 128) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This is very similar to Milennium Chess, a commercial variant played on a 15x8 board with only one Rook in the middle of the lineup. I've played it and found it good, and have communicated with the author (whose name I've forgotten). He said he had tried 16x8 with two Rooks in the middle but felt that the two Rooks in the center of the board were too powerful. Re: Nightriders, it occurs to me you could also create a piece that you might call an Asterisk, which can move as a Nightrider left and right (that is, 2 steps along the rank and 1 step along the file, but not vice versa), or a Rook along the files: so it would have six lines of motion.
Taikyoku Shogi. Extremely large shogi variant. (36x36, Cells: 1296) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This game is played not by individuals, but by two competing monasteries, deep in the Pazomian hills, where monks devote their lives to the study of Shogi and its variants. The first (and so far, the only) game was started over 600 years ago, and each monastery has been making two moves a year (with interruptions for crises such as famines and wars); one delivers its moves on the equinoxes, the other, on the solstices. Books have been written analyzing the status of the game; novices study the thinking of the players who have gone before them for years before their opinions are sought for current moves. Most experts feel that they are nearly finished with the opening now. Anyway, it's a nice legend, I think. Course, I did make it up myself.
If the width of the board is even, can Black always make the mirror-image of White's previous move, where the line dividing the board into two halves lengthwise is the axis of symmetry? If so, then Black will always win this way (on a board of even width). Unless there's something I'm missing, I think Black could do that.
Tetrahedral Chess. Three dimensional variant with board in form of tetrahedron. (7x(), Cells: 84) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I've been thinking lately that the 84-cell tetrahedral board might adapt better to a 3D Shogi. My reasoning is that Shogi pieces are less powerful than Chess pieces, getting much of their value from being parachutable once captured, and the difficulty of visualizing moves on this board might be lessened for less powerful pieces. I'm considering replacing the Rooks with Lances that can only move orthogonally 'forward', the Dabbabantes with some kind of Silvers and Golds that can only move to a subset of the adjacent cells, and having a Horse (a Knight, but only with its forwardmost moves) that automatically drops into the King's starting square whenever the King first vacates it. I don't think I'd include any pieces like the Shogi Bishop or Rook. The board's colors could be reduced to two. Pawns might move to the forward cells of the same color, or of opposite color, or there might be two kinds of Pawn. A Silver and Gold would move to any of the four forward cells, or to the adjacent lateral or rear cells that are the opposite color (Silver) or the same color (Gold, considering the same-levels cells 'diagonally' adjacent as adjacent for this purpose). It appeals to me that the board is also nearly the same size as a conventional Shogi board. These armies would be a bit smaller, but I think they're also a bit stronger.
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