Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

There are more current developments, like 'zB' for Crooked Bishop.  I try
to find them and add them here.

Thanks, John.  I have z in my list of modifiers.

While compiling my notes, I was thinking about compound notation for such
pieces as bent riders and Xiangqi horses.  I have an idea involving () and
&, but wonder if other solutions exist.

Defining y as a modifier for 'away from the square of origin' (a common
enough limitation in these moves), we might have:

(W&yF) for the Xiangqi horse

F(F&yR) for the Gryphon.

I also considered extended notation for leaps greater than (3,3).  Since
there is an indefinite number of such leaps, the possibility of something
like [14] comes to mind in lieu of another hard-to-remember letter for a
(1,4) leaper.

[17][55] for the Root-Fifty Leaper.

I don't know what other extensions may be in existence or proposed.

I think that's pushing it.  :)  Defining moves alone (with a provision for
divergent pieces) is hard enough.

Note that Betza Notation doesn't begin to define castling, promotion, or
en passant...just to name 'powers' of the orthodox pieces.  And to attempt
to do so would make it less useful, not more.

My $.02, of course.

I was looking over the funny notation page a while ago, and it seems to
lack punctuation and operators. I imagine a better system could be made if
it made use of punctuation and operators. Here are some initial
suggestions. I'm sure it could be developed better than this.

? move continues if piece is not over occupied space
& move continues regardless of what's on current space
+ piece completes left move and continues with right move
| means makes one move or other
* means indefinite repetition of last move -- unless otherwise specified,
* means ?*
! means move end with capture
. means move must end on empty space
[] means move cannot be made unless whole move is made
() used as punctuation marks

[W&F] = Knight
W|F = Man
[W?F] = Mao
W* = Rook
F* = Bishop
W*|F* = Queen
(W!|F!)|(D|A) = Murray Lion
((D|A)|(W|F))|((W|F)+(W|F)) = Chu Shogi Lion

Pages I have found with extensions to Funny [Betza] Notation:

http://www.chessvariants.com/piececlopedia.dir/rhino.html
http://www.chessvariants.com/dpieces.dir/diffknights.html

I'm sure there are others.

IMHO, the purpose of Funny [Betza] Notation is to make move descriptions
easier to understand.  When you add operators, the move descriptions start
to look like symbolic logic expressions, and thereby become more opaque to
the reader.  When that occurs, the variant author will also describe the
move in words, and the main reason for using the notation has been
obviated.

We could also consider extending Funny [Betza] Notation to cover movement
on triangular, hexagonal, and higher dimensional boards.  We could also
extend it to include the nature of the board and the opening array.  Then
a variant could be described by a list of statements in Funny [Betza]
Notation (or FBN), sort of a Backus-Naur Form for CV's

I have written a summary of the notation as it stands, including the
extension introduced for the Rhino.  It is a bit more organized than
Ralph's earlier notes, but probably could use some enhancement.  It will
be up soon.

I didn't intend to start an animated debate, and I apologize for doing
so.

As someone who has taught symbolic logic, I find it far less opaque than
Betza's funny notation. Operators and puncuation make things clearer. I
spent this afternoon devising a new notation. I'll post the examples of
the notatation here, and I'll post a tutorial on it later. See if you can
figure things out without the legend at the end.

Wazir: O
Ferz: D
Alfil: DF
Dabbaba: OF
Knight: OFT
Camel: OFFT or OTFF
Zebra: OFTFF or OFFTF
Giraffe: OFFFT or OTFFF
Chinese Knight: OeFT
Rook: O*
Bishop: D*
Queen: O*|D*
Nightrider: (OFT)*
Alfilrider: (DD)*
Dabbabarider: (OO)*
Marshall: O*|OFT
Paladin: D*|OFT
Grasshopper: (O|D)*pF
Korean Cannon: O*pF*
Chinese Cannon: O*e|O*pF*o
Vao: D*e|D*pF*o
Leo: ((O|D)*e)|((O|D)*pF*o)
Chinese Elephant: DeF
Nightriderhopper: (OFT)*p?
Long Leaper: ((O|D)!)*e
Withdrawer: ((O|D)!)BF*e

In case it helps, here is a brief legend of symbols used in these
examples.

| = disjunction operator, separating options
O = disjunction of all orthogonal directions
D = disjunction of all diagonal directions
F = relative forward direction
T = (L|R)
L = relative left direction
R = relative right direction
B = relative backward direction
? = optional, conditional repetition of last move
* = infinite ?s
e = continue move only if space is empty
o = continue move only if opponent on space
p = continue move only if piece on space
! = capture piece here
() = punctuation

'I didn't intend to start an animated debate, and I apologize for doing
so.'

Bushwa! You should be proud of starting such an animated debate.

Don't you understand the dynamics of group creativity? If you can start an
animated debate, you will cause many new ideas to be generated and then a
consensus to be reached which will be the next stage of the advance of
human knowledge. Starting an animated debate is perhaps the third highest
thing one can accomplish in human experience.

'When that occurs, the variant author will also describe the
move in words, and the main reason for using the notation has been


Bingo! You win a prize. This is a fundamental flaw in the very idea of a
notation, and yet I have found it better to have some notation than to
have none. A paradox.

With due respect to the person who apologized for starting this animated
debate, he didn't start it, I did with my comment on the
Chancellor/Marshall/Empress thread on 3/24 in which I recomended using
Betza notation on the games pages in parens after the piece name.  

Out of curiousity, Ralph, what are the two things higher than starting an
animated debate?  :)

Perhaps a special punctuation character could be added to the notation
meaning 'this notation does't fully describe the piece, you must read the
description.'  The purpose of this is to use notation to describe the
piece as well as possible even when it can't do so completely.

So for example, I might have this piece on my game page:

Bogeyman (RN#)

where # means 'not completely described'.  Then you can tell at a glance
that the piece is similar to a Chancellor, even if not identical.

Maybe what we need is 'Betza Notation' and 'Betza Notation Lite' :-)

And just to make it more complicated, why not have arbitrary state
indicators?  They would have no definite value, but be assigned by the
variant inventor.

So, for instance, in Optima, Michael could say up front that certain
symbols designate the manner a piece captures, or such states as 'armored'
or 'loyal'.  

A 'method of capture' indicator could actually be a worthwhile extension
for descibing Ultima-like variants.

I put in some symbols to be used as methods of capture in the betza
notation comments.

Let's see what I can do about the Rhino.

Single-step Rhino: O?T
Sliding Rhino: (O?T)*
Mirror Rhino: D?T
Sliding Mirror Rhino: (D?T)*
Double Rhino: ((O|D)?T)*
Monster: ((O|D)?T)*|(O|D)*

The ? works differently than F. While F unconditionally and non-optionally
moves in the last direction moved, ? adds an optional continuation of the
whole move that repeats the last move made, and, by default, it adds it
only when the current space is empty.

For example, O??? describes the movement of a Short Rook, one which can
move no further than four spaces. It is the equivalent of
(O|OeF|OeFeF|OeFeFeF). In contrast, OFFF describes a piece that leaps four
spaces in any orthogonal direction.

Let me add some comments on the system I have designed. I call it Piece
Code, and its purpose is twofold. One is to provide a clear and concise
way to express how a piece moves to a human reader. The other is to serve
as a macro programming language for describing piece moves in short
strings, which may eventually be incorporated into the PBM to check the
legality of moves. Unlike Betza's funny notation, it does not share the purpose of serving as notation for identifying pieces.

Fergus,

I like your system, but I have an idea that I think might be an
improvement.  Though you allow for O or D, you only allow 4 relative
directions (F, B, L, and R). Would it be better to have 8 relative
directions? Then a Knight would be (O#) where # is whatever symbol means
turn 45 degrees either way, rather than the current (OFT). Though it
doesn't matter much for the Knight, I think it would make the Mao
clearer.

This would also be adaptable to hex board by defining 6 relative
directions.

How would you code a piece from Henk van Haeringen's Exchess called the
Herald?  It is normally a straight-forward FA in Funny Notation, but on
its owner's first rank it becomes FAsW.  Another challenging example would
be the Ultima ruleset where the range of a piece varies with the rank it
stands on.

On a hex board, I would consider using clock hours for the six 'orthogonal'
and six 'diagonal' directions.

When I first described Piece Code here, I gave a brief legend only for the
symbols actually used in the examples, but several of these symbols were
macros for code you didn't see. Absolute directions have been defined as
hexadecimal digits between 1 and C, as per the clockface model. But this
does not work so well for a square board. So I think I will use a numeric
keypad model for square boards.

There is a relative direction for every absolute direction. It is
presently identified by prepending an absolute direction with the /
operator. F, L, R, and B are aliases for four of these. I plan to add P
and S for port and starboard directions. On a square board, these would
default to the two forward diagonal directions. Y could be used for (P|S),
and a Mao's movement could be represented as OeY. A Knight might be
described as moving OY. A Holywar Squire would be OeY|DeY or (O|D)eY.

I'm also planning on adding symbols for rotation without moving. I may use
lowercase d and w for deasil and widdershins, which mean clockwise and
counterclockwise but start with different letters. Each of these would
rotate a piece's orientation to the next axis. This would be 45 degree
turn on a square board, a 30 degree turn on a hex board. The letter u
could be used for a U-turn, i.e. rotating 180 degrees. Rotation would
change a piece's relative directions without moving it. This would give
another way to do a Mao move: Oe(w|d)F. Using lowercase y to represent
(w|d), a Mao's move could be expressed as OeyF, moving one space
orthogonally, then if the space is empty, rotating one turn deasil or
widdershins to one of the forward diagonal directions, then moving
forward.

Regarding the Herald's move, I have not yet added anything for taking into
account the position of a piece. Given that I want Piece Code to define
pieces in a board-independent way, and to be understandable both by humans
and by software, there may not be a feasible way for it to handle how the
Herald moves. I plan to eventually add strings of Piece Code to PBM piece
sets, and these are intended to be used with any board someone gives FEN
code for. If I tried to define a piece in terms of a particular board, it
may break down on another board. Instead of trying to make it do
everything, I'll accept some limitations in Piece Code and use it mainly
for generating warning messages that a given move may be illegal. I may
take the earlier suggestion of using some symbol that indicates that the
code only partially describes how a piece moves.

Hi all, I hadn't seen this thread before. I found it while looking for a
place to propose my extensions to Betza's funny notation.

I feel that Betza's funny notation is a good place to start for defining
a
standard since it has been in use for many years, and seems to be
functioning as an 'undeclared' standard.

I would like to propose an extension to Betza's notation that perhaps
could be agreed upon by a group from the CV community and then published.
Obviously, such a standard will not be easy to agree upon, which is why I
am posting this as a proposal.

If any one is interested in forming a group with the purpose of attempting
to establish a move notation standard, please post here. Thanks!

http://chessvariants.org/dictionary/BexNotation.pdf

Betza Notation has article from 1996 and he used it before that, so say it
is 20 years old. I used BFN only this week here, 
Http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=28365.
On that 'NN' for Nightrider, Betza writes in 1996, ''If the capital
letter is repeated, it means the piece has a long-range move of unlimited
length. For example, WW means the same thing as a Rook.'' Used for
squares, Lawson mentions extension to hexagonal, the two flat geometries
far the important ones.  BFN is practical and easy and used often for
example
Friedlander Applets for mid-range R4, R3, B3. Extensions ad hoc 
have been ongoing such as Joyce's Bent Hero/Shaman become War Machines by
Betza Notation, including Joyce's designation 'AF7', WarElephant, for
same-directional Alfil and Ferz seven times.  That AF7 exact definition can
be checked for correspondence with bfn, changed for the one turn allowed
all the daisies, put into words not complete notation yet.