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Top shuttlecock speed 200 mph, Badminton is standardized (Olympics 1992 on) and it never took 100 tries. Official Rules & court: 17x44, 20' doubles. Net 5', Aluminum, graphite, carbon fibre racket wt. 2-3.5, l. 27''. 15 points to win 2 of 3 games wins match, single-elimination tournaments. In 1990's CVPage was two-track: multiform and on-a-mission for alternatives to dead Mad Queen. In those days FRC, Capablanca and Centennial were early contenders amidst all the run-of-the-mill(fun and funny) noncontenders, and everyone understood the difference between the two tracks. All knew(usually) when Betza was serious or sarcastic. Betza et al. would weigh in earnestly when pressed on faults/problems of 8x8 FIDE, the focal point and jumping board for track two. Then CVPage T2, with standard 8x8 point of departure, was reminiscent of DPritchard's 1994 ECV write-up under 'Capablanca Chess' and worldwide 1920's debate. Please read those two pages to re-create the CVPage scene too circa 1999. Today with more knowledge and knowhow, CVPage or its enthusiasts are yet less inclined to standardize any new Chesses, based on the above or any of Rococo, Promoter's, Falcon, Eight-Stone, AltOrth Hex, Jacks&Witches, Nomic, Bifurcation pieces, Quintessential, Eurasian or whatever finalists would emerge from a search. Their devil-may-care became regress, progress was left for years 1996-2002 approximately, and other entities will bear the torch.
Joe Joyce wrote on Mon, Aug 27, 2007 07:50 PM UTC:One of the features of multiform is that it can work productively with many different minimalists and other groups. George, what are your criteria for games that are sufficiently chesslike to be in contention? Does the board size range from 8x8 to 10x10, or only 8x10? Must all the FIDE pieces be maintained totally intact under any circumstances? Is there a minimum and maximum number of pieces? Of pawns? I certainly have no objection to discussing, assisting with, or designing some games under these constraints; in a sense, it's a contest. Many of us like contests. Lay out the rules, and some of us will enter. In the wider sense, I've joked before that we are obscurely famous, known by tens worldwide. How many people actually read this board? 10, 100, 1000, 10000? Or play? Heck, I included printable boards in my early games, and even mediocre shatranj-type printable pieces along with the 8x10 and 10x10 boards in 'Two Large Shatranj Variants'. To my knowledge, 1 person has used this; he printed a board after I told him it was there. I wish more people would play these games; possibly when the world has more leisure time, our creations will become more popular. Maybe as popular as military-style board wargames were once. Maybe not. ;-) But whether any game is a serious try at the next chess, a shatranj variant, or some giant game with pieces that cover 10-20 squares each, I will treat them all the same. Different perspective. To sum up: There is no problem with your 'two tracks' for game design, and I will cheerfully do what I can to boost your 'inside track'. But surely all designs need to be considered strictly as games in their own terms, as well as being judged by a specific existing set of criteria...
Constraints of Joe Joyce remind us of over-four-years-ago Luotuoqi nominations and the game that was designed on 8x8. That effort was whimsical. JJoyce's proposed contest could be instead a group effort at a serious '10x10' that nobody really seems to get right. Do it by Committee, like Luotuoqi, answering each JJoyce question in turn, and once three or four agree, that will be the form approved: (1) Minimum # pieces (2) FIDE or not, and so on, as in Joyce 27.Aug.07 Comment twelve back.
This was suitable thread for prolificists to propound or explain, yet they did not at all but for one Joyce. I disagree with everything Jeremy says in starting ''Multiform'', suspended almost immediately, 19.August.2007, except for his quote of Ralph Betza, italicized probably in Blue at the end, at the start: ''In order to come up with something really new, you have to know what's been done before.'' Jeremy Good also quotes actual book, by Lippmann. In fact, ChessboardMath's next project, along with separately studying '9x9's, may as well be a book 'The Chess Artist' 2003 by J.C. Hallman. The precedent will be the two books on the automaton Turk we already reviewed. Jeremy's thread here has formulation of Chess Variant Page two-track system, originally the accepted method of operation, comparing it to Badminton. To answer Joyce's question(easy to figure out, there being only 4 comments), I consider 100 squares an automatic reject, because increase of over 50% would be overwhelming -- admitting 100 to be round and popular number, making Joyce's question appropriate. However, we cannot, and must not, force the board to fit requisite criteria.
Joe Joyce wrote on Thu, Sep 18, 2008 05:10 PM UTC:George, have you ever watched Star Trek? The original, with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley? The 3 main characters, Kirk, Spock, and Bones, are an unusual trio to be running a starship, if you consider their individual personalities, how they each act and react. But if you look at the situation from a larger perspective, you see that the three represent the three main facets of human personality: will, intellect, and emotion. When they function properly together, they are one complete person, and capable of properly commanding the Enterprise. The CVPages is a group of people with varying beliefs, abilities, and styles. I, for one, am deeply appreciative of your grasp of the history of chess and chess variants. While the TV show Star Trek is, at its best, allegory, it does portray an organization as functioning like an individual when the organization is at its best. And it leads one to speculate on such organization as there is at CV. Lol, I design a lot more games that you, George, but you sure write more than I do. I guess you'd characterize me as the random thoughts [maybe even nightmares] up in the head; and I'd characterize you as the historian. :-) But those characterizations are incorrect, or at least incomplete; I, for example, am cast in the role of spokesman for the multitude. And George, this makes you defender of the orthodox. Surely these last 2 tongue-in-cheek characterizations are a lot closer to what we'd like to believe, anyhow. Now to get to chess variants, the ostensible purpose of this site, it appears that you will accept boards up to 16x16 for 'the other track'. But for 'the next chess', 80ish squares is about maximum, being some 25% larger than 8x8, halfway between that and your 50% is way too much. This gives us 8x10, 9x9... 7x11, an interesting size for 1-step pawns games, maybe, but not a shape all that comfortable for western players, so that ends the available 80ish boards, and leaves 8x9 as the only remaining possible board size between 8x8 and 80 squares. Will orthochess players use any of those board sizes?
Star Trek? Well, I do see from time to time, people attempting to go where 'no one has gone before'. That is both good and bad. It is good as far as innovation goes. Bad, when it involves pushing the edge as far as insulting anyone.
I am glad Hutnik admits he understands the rather unfortunate intimidation inherent in the application of prolificist ethos by few parties named, including his own version, involving all together only some 20 or 40 individuals worldwide. Hutnik would plainly recognize that extreme multiform philosophy insults 99% of Chess players, who like regular forms modestly altered. Yet in that reasonable middle ground, the vast majority may well tolerate and come to accept some dozens of or even hundred Chesses with RNBKQP. Great comment Joe (anyone can make new departure), and simply put 80 squares seems to be correct (for track one) from vantage of many arguments over the years of CVPage. If we get the board right first, the task is reduced. Jeremy's originating comment has much substance hopefully others will validate or contend. I for one am in total rejection and contention with Jeremy's peroration of shared CV outlook with Joyce and stand ready for any fringe supporters of Good with counterarguments from the mainstream.
Joe Joyce wrote on Thu, Sep 18, 2008 11:05 PM UTC:Lol, as a self-professed agnostic evolutionist, I am far more often characterized as 'wallowing in Evil', rather than as a 'fringe supporter of Good', but I'll do my best. Let me start by giving the 8x8 western variant its original name: the Mad Queen variant. The history of western chess from shatranj to the present is the story of short range pieces becoming 'infinite' sliders. Thus, logically, the next change should make the knights into the Gryphon and anti-Gryphon, or Mage and anti-Mage, or somesuch. One knight steps one orthogonally, then 1 diagonally outward, where it may stop, as the normal knight, or it continues on, like a rook, orthogonally outward, in one of two possible directions. The other knight, for balance, should move in the opposite manner: one square diagonally, then one square orthogonally outward, where it may stop, or continue diagonally outward as a bishop. And in keeping with the changes from shatranj to present, the 2 new knights must be lame. They are only sliders. You might even allow them the 2-step slide knight move of the other new knight, although the piece would have to stop on the old knight's destination square, and could not make an extended move. I propose this as the most logical 'next step' in chess, based on the known and surmised chess history of turning short range leapers into long range sliders. Interestingly, it reproduces some of the Falcon moves, another piece proposed as the logical next step in chess, with a different movement mechanic.
Joe, I think your knight-slider is kin to my Marauder
Joe Joyce wrote on Fri, Sep 19, 2008 12:53 AM UTC:Graeme, you are absolutely right. Your Marauder certainly has the key elements of the knight replacements I proposed. It's a lame multipath knightrider, and could be considered a third candidate for next most logical piece. [evil grin!] But my piece is more in keeping with the history - it's overpowered, where yours really isn't. The range beyond a standard knight's 2 squares is compensated by the combination of lameness and knight-move destinations only, in your piece. With my pieces, the initial knight's move is the same, but the extensions are bishop or rook, both of whom bear on more squares than a knight. Another piece these knights are related to is Carlos Cetina's sissa, although more distantly. Now, the sissa is a real butt-kicker, and it also started off as a knight replacement, though it combines the moves of bishop and rook.
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Sep 19, 2008 08:51 AM UTC:This might be a good place to point out that the Mao, Moa and Moo do not exhaust the possibilities of lame Knight moves. They are the only possibilities as you lay out the Knight's leap on the board as an orthogonal + diagonal step (in either order). But there are other paths that lead to a (1,2) leap as well. Super Chess, for instance, makes use in some pieces (Archer, Ambassador) of a three-step Knight move, reaching (1,2) through the unique path (0,1)-(1,1)-(1,2) (i.e. a zig-zag path of orthogonal steps, first and last one in the same direction, and the middle one perpendicular to that). The rationalization in Super Chess is that an Archer needs a clear line of fire, and thus both 'intervening' squares must be empty. This introduces an even larger degree of lameness to the moves, which can now be blocked on two squares. (Note that a path (1,1)-(0,1)-(1,2) effectively would be the same.) Other posibilities would be to lay out the path as (1,0)-(1,1)-(1,2) or (0,1)-(0,2)-(1,2), the L-shaped moves. These would also be 'double lame'. In practice lameness is a very strong handicap, especially in a piece like Mao, where two moves in different directions can be blocked on a single square, due to overlapping paths. A Mao in normal Chess would be worth only half a Knight , almost exactly. With doubly lame moves almost no value would remain, unless the lameness is partly ameliorated by mking the piece multi-path, like the Moo. If we would combine the two L-shaped and the zig-zag doubly-lame move in a multi-path piece, it would have exactly the same degree of lameness (topologically equivalent) as George Duke's Falcon!
Joe Joyce wrote on Sat, Sep 20, 2008 12:09 AM UTC::-) Getting more into multiform [and referencing one of my designs again!], I wonder how many games use the lamed knights, and how effective they are. I used the 'L'-shaped, doubly-blockable move for the knight in my first chess variant, a 4D game I called Hyperchess, played on a 4x4x4x4 board. [To make the game playable, I eliminated all of the 3D and 4D diagonal moves.] Amazingly, the knight in this game is on par with the queen [if I'm remembering the numbers right, the Q attacks 22 squares max, the N, 23] and is truly not inhibited by being blockable [considering it has 2 paths to any destination square]. In fact, I think it's necessary for balance that the N be blockable or it has too much power in hype. [This way of using the knight practically makes it a Jetan piece.] The more general point is that the geometry of the playing field, and certainly its dimensionality, has the 'final say' in how powerful a piece is. The simplest example is 2 pieces and 2 boards. Pieces: a rook and a bishop; boards: both 1D, one an orthogonal row of squares and the other, a diagonal row. Question [for the mathematical among us, I suppose]: is it the case that for any [class of] chesspiece, there exists a board that increases the piece power, and one that decreases it? Beyond the trivial example of boards 'cut out' to mirror that particular piece's move. The 1D boards provide 2 effectively trivial examples, though you can't get a lot more from 1D.[.. unless you're Larry, or Dan, or...] Another trivial example would be a disconnected board, with squares radiating a knight's move apart from the origin. [What dimensionality is that?] The N/4x4x4x4 combo above provides a non-trivial example, I believe. The infinite 2D board, or a very large one, gives the sliders B, R, Q a value approaching infinity/continuously increasing, while the N on that board approaches a value of 4. Other short range pieces also plateau in value as a 2D board increases in size. That's if it's continuous. Poke holes in that 2D board, make it a semi-regular lattice, and the situation changes. Short range leapers, or double [and triple...] leapers lose less mobility, while 'infinite' sliders have their paths shrunk to shorter and shorter distances. Is this fit of board and piece the case for all [types of] pieces and non-trivial boards? Edit: Hmm, this fits in well with George's Tessellations comment and Rich's on 91.5... just below. Lucky, I guess. Or maybe chess *is* geometry.
H. G. Muller writes: 'This might be a good place to point out that the Mao, Moa and Moo do not exhaust the possibilities of lame Knight moves. They are the only possibilities as you lay out the Knight's leap on the board as an orthogonal + diagonal step (in either order). But there are other paths that lead to a (1,2) leap as well.'
The exact path taken by a Knight or Wizard is also significant in Fergus Duniho's Wormhole Chess. In that variant the pieces skip over the former locations of squares that have been removed from the game.
I stumbled into this topic, in an attempt to make a lame Star Trek joke, based on what Joe wrote. Now, since Mr. Duke happened to reply in such a way my joke appears to be taken seriously as a comment on the subject (well, either that or he is commenting on what I had written before), I felt compelled to read what was written in here, and want to comment. I will say this: Unless there is something common that allows all ideas to lend to a common development structure, that can collective be used by this community here, and worldwide, it is more of the same that doesn't advance anything. All these attempts to generate endless variants is an activity that doesn't do much to advance chess variants collectively, but may get someone a few minutes of spotlight in a, 'gee that was clever', sort of way. There seems to be a fixation on wanting to be clever, rather than doing what works. Either the cleverness comes in some form of trying to get as weird as possible, so people will be amazed at how different you are, or it is in the form of 'THE NEXT CHESS' (to which one designer I have written says, 'Yeah, and I have 10 of them') where the person thinks they have the magic bullet that will be THE game that the world will play as the next form of chess. To this end, can I propose that some thought be given to there being developed a system for handling new ideas that they work more like legos than they do discrete items that are meant to be seen as clever and 'Brilliant', that live and die on their own, and aren't used for any other purpose but stand alone? My take here is MAYBE if we design cool bits (like the Simplified Chess Board), that people can roll their own with, rather than entire systems that are give and take by themselves, we maybe can do something that advances chess variants, rather than spin of a near infinite number of reinventions of the wheel, in a state that we don't even know if it is Heraclitian-Calvinballish or not.
Hutnik has made the same proposal before and should just go ahead with Simplified (what's that 7x8?) as starting point, and ask for validation or emendation. Characterize it as Legos or Luotuoqi Committee(see CVPage index for previous group effort.) Rich could use thread or Game Courier or both for embodiment evolving, and designing within Hutnik's ''common development structure'' under his leadership, thus mitigating individuals' stake in outcomes. If Gifford, or Fourriere versus the World is scrapped, new Luotuoqi CV gets plaudits. And if everyone is conscientious, we can send it to Kirsan Ilumzhinov with ultimatum.
Joe Joyce wrote on Sat, Sep 20, 2008 04:19 PM UTC:Wormhole is a great example of a game that is multiform all by itself. Not a game I'd care to try to figure out the piece values for. The pieces Fergus chose work out extremely well on that ever-shrinking board. They are more interesting than the linear sliders for Wormhole. While I wasn't thinking of anything so extreme [in particular, I *was* thinking of a stable board], I don't know how much better an example of piece moves and board geometries fitting together one could find, in spite of the fact the actual shape of the board changes each turn. Excellent example, excellent design. Thank you for pointing it out, David.
Hey George, several comments here: 1. I DON'T believe a 8x7 Simplified Chess should be the staring point. I believe 8x8 should be the starting point, because it is the most available. I believe 8x7 is a cool board to use for game designs, as a different way to do things create variants. It isn't THE starting place, just one of the boards we can use. 2. I am not interested in me being THE leader on the standardized evolving chess project. I would like to be part of the process, to help, but I am too busy with ALL abstract strategy games, to be focused on one the niches. Currently, I am involved with a Hall of Fame project, the IAGO World Tour, helping abstract strategy game associations media coverage and sponsors, and an IAGO Clubhouse project, to get people places to play abstract strategy games and other players of these games. There are other things to. So, I am too busy to head up this project. I am up for helping out and giving advice, but NOT work on it now. Maybe IAGO gets off and everything is going fine, I could jump in more. But, a key about the 'Chess of Tomorrow' project, IAGO Chess System, and so on, is that it needs to be a community that runs with it, not one person sitting as a mad dictator on top. Do you know a throng that is demanding that I lead this? If no, then I am no going to slave drive this. I do say that leadership IS needed though. If people want to know how it should work, study the concept of crowdsharing, and how Linux came abou. 3. If people want a thread to discuss this Legos project, then please feel free to find the 'Chess of Tomorrow' project on the Wiki page, and IAGO Chess System: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSiagochesssyste And start commenting. Whatever becomes of standards out of this process will become part of what IAGO does need. 4. I also don't think the chess variant community is in any place to deliver ultimatums. I once did that with a group of chess grandmasters regarding their game, and the results didn't go well. I ended up spending the following week emails saying I was sorry. I won't do that again.
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When someone dismisses a large chess variant simply because it is large and doesn't seem to have popular appeal, it reminds me that at one time, arithmetic and basic geometry were considered very sophisticated functions only the most intelligent adults could perform, never children. Chess gives us the opposite model where child prodigies are common. Before people even guessed that algebra and the calculus were possible. It is misleading to use historical eras a way of measuring achievement in any field. The scientific advances of the last 100 years have dwarfed the scientific advances of the previous thousand years and the scientific advances of just the last 10 years have dwarfed the scientific advances of the previous 100 years. Just compare a brand new computer to one that is 10 years old. That is the way we should be thinking about our chess variants, as reflecting the diversity of nature and the pace of change wrought by technological innovation. Not just chess prodigies but computer whiz kids are common for the same reason.
Proliferation of chess variants represents an aspect of the future into which we are moving, if we don't fall into obscurantist traps like denying the aspect of evolution that is a fact (every bit as much a fact as that 2 + 2 = 4) and pretending that any era in history was truly golden, which falls prey to what Walter Lippmann calls the 'pathetic fallacy' in his Preface to Morals, a spirited critique of the history of moral authority and its clash with modernism.
People sometimes compare what I do to what Charles Gilman does. I consider that a compliment and it's not an accident. What's surprising to me is not that there are so many chess variants and so many people inventing them, but that there are not a lot more people like Charles Gilman, who is a great inspiration to me. There are not too many chess variants and too many chess variant inventors. There are far too few of both, in my opinion.
Let me put that in context. I live near the largest library in the world, the Library of Congress and I have spent much time studying there. Yet I don't believe there are 'so many books, so little time' -- I believe there are 'far too few really good books' and 'way too much time.' Just as the best computers are yet to come, computers with abilities that exceed human intelligence by many orders of magnitude, the best chess variants have yet to come (though there are many, many good ones) and the best books, even the best histories, have yet to be written. That's my bias.
I'm going to close by quoting Betza from his interview he did here. It reflects an aspect of my design philosophy and why it's important to me that we try to learn from what others have done and keep on trying, trying, trying: First, you should realize that it's easy to invent a chess variant, and it's even easy to invent an interesting one, and even easy (with a bit of luck) to invent a pretty good one. In order to come up with something really new, you have to know what's been done before, and in order to come up with something really good, you have to try -- and then perhaps learn from what you did -- and then try another one.