Comments by BenGood

well, i have to qualify my previous comment, altho i still like this zrf, i previously stated that it plays well - meaning that zillions plays competitively, but since then i have easily beaten zillions several times even tho it's set to play at the highest level and 3 mins per move. for some reason if you threaten a mate in one that is easily defended against, zillions will not do so. i'm not sure why this is, as far as i know, the tandem84 doesn't suffer from this problem even tho it is also turn-based on 2 boards.

sorry, you have it backwards, the diagrams are correct. the bottom *right*-hand corner square is always white for both players. the queens are always placed on squares of their own color, this means that the queen is on the left if you are white and on the right if you are black.

well, i had been holding off on making comments about contest entries until the judging was done, but since everybody else has started it's obviously not a big deal... <P> this game is a lot of fun and the pieces are neat. i eventually plan to put the teleporter and the bobber in the piececlopedia. i've found that the 12x7 board weakens the B and N about equally, altho of course there is no N in this game, the royal knight is a different piece altogether and on a smaller board is worth much more than a rook. (as a side note, i've found that the 16x8 board in short's doublechess weakens the N and B about equally). <P> i was initially skeptical of the 12x7 board because i've found that boards with odd numbers of rows in games not using shogi pawns are unbalanced because whoever moves first usually has an easier time taking control of the center row and thus gaining an advantage. had short used standard chess pawns this would've been a problem, but i've found that the crab effectively eliminates this problem. <P> one curious aspect of this game is that it is the first (and only) game i've seen where castling is usually a liability rather than a help. this is because castling puts the king in the middle of a stretch of empty squares which are then vulnerable to teleporters (altho the special teleporter rule helps against this, i'm not sure if this rule is implemented in the zrf or not). when i played zillions i lost every game by teleporter attack until the game in which i didn't castle.

another impressive game. as i've mentioned previously elsewhere, games that use standard chess pawns and boards with an odd number of rows tend to be unbalanced, but this problem is eliminated by the double-board aspect of the game. in most of my games, one player was able to get a slight upperhand on one board while the other player gained control of the other board, altho this is somewhat of a generalization. <P> the tactics in this game quickly become complex and intense, and therefore zillions plays the game well. pawn endgames are particularly interesting because pawns can dodge threats by jumping from board to board. the ghost works well and is easy to visualize and remember (i know aikin discarded several other versions of the ghost before picking the final ghost).

i feel i must respond to the previous comment. i've read the article that he links to, and i am not impressed with it. i no longer trust anything written by sam sloan. he talks at great length and sounds impressive but says hardly anything to prove his case. he trashes murray constantly (yes, everybody knows now murray made some mistakes, but this is true of virtually all researchers of the time in all subjects, no matter how good they were). he claims that everybody since murray has just accepted his work, which is not true - eales consulted original sources and was mostly impressed with murray's work. besides, showing that murray made mistakes does not prove sloan right. virtually everybody i've talked to agrees that sloan and li do not have enough evidence to make their case. i would recommend approaching this article with a big does of skepticism.

i'm not sure what frank is talking about, guarding pieces does not work in most situations, unless the removal of the piece captured will open up a sight line between the defending piece and the piece that captured it. incidentally i've never thought this was a good game, the Q's totally dominate, nobody's even demonstrated a way to me to defend against having your army totally gunned down by the Q. i remember one time somebody posted to the yahoo board, can rifle chess be saved? my thought was probably not, and with so many other good variants around to play, why bother?

interesting, but isn't this piece the half-crooked queen? i would think the crooked queen would be crooked bishop + crooked rook. (it would also mean there would be two half-crooked queens.)

this game looks fun. i requested email opponents on the yahoo board last year, but i had no takers. moeser declined saying 4-player chess is more of an otb social thing, which is true, but right now i'm not in a place where i can come up with 3 otb opponents, and i'd like to try this game (also, i've played a variety of multiplayer email games on richard's server, and it works ok). i've played zillions a couple times, but zillions plays this one very poorly. i'm guessing it's because zillions doesn't understand the team concept, so the two armies don't cooperate, and since when zillions thinks for each army, it sees one against three, thinks it's losing, and therefore plays weird. <P> so if anybody wants to play, email me at good7972@hotmail.com. i'm only looking to start one game, and it will be the squirrel version. i'd like to use moeser's checkmate rules too, even tho they are changed in the zrf - presumably because moeser's rules were too difficult or impossible to implement in zillions (i'll be using zillions to keep track of the game position, but i should be able to work around it once one player is checkmated, since i won't actually be playing against the computer).

this question can't be answered without knowing how big the board is. the bigger the board, the less of a big deal the hobbling is. the only hobbled piece i can think of that i've played with is the hobbled bishop in timur's. zillions rates it 2.3 pawns, and indeed i found it very difficult to use. the timur's giraffe, which has to go at least 3 squares, is practically useless til the endgame. <P> on the other hand, in rennchess the duke and the cavalier can be considered hobbled as well, since they can't move to adjacent squares, and altho this is a definitely a weakness, they are nonetheless strong pieces. <P> so i would guess zillions' value is too low, but it's hard to tell w/o knowing the context of the game.

i sent kristina an email, but for any other interested readers, here is the answer: <P> to answer your question, no, it is illegal to skip your move in chess. there are no exceptions to this rule. if you have a legal move, you must choose one. if you have exactly one legal move available, then you must play that move. if you have no legal moves, but are not in check, then that is stalemate and the game is a draw.

this piece is unclear to me. does it only move as a knightrider when capturing? or does it also have the option of making a noncapturing knightrider? 'cannon-style' would imply that it does, but your comments imply that it does not.

nice page. your king's court link doesn't seem to go to the right spot, btw.

i've been checking the king's court webpage periodically for as long as i can remember knowing about it (several years probably), and they've never actually had a set for sale. the webpage states:

Kings Court is in the production stage and will Be available at the end of may or early june.

but it's said that for at least a year, maybe more. anybody know anything about it? anybody ever contact them about buying a game? i suppose i could email them myself, but i thought i'd ask here first.

>>I have resolved to treat any complaints like a baseball umpire: don't explain and don't retract. <P> i wouldn't worry about this. when i did the 40-square contest, i received virtually no feedback - good, bad, or otherwise - about the job i did (except for the editors thanking me for being a judge). <P> judges may be interested in my 'thoughts on judging', which is part of the same page as the contest winners. i just reread it and it holds up pretty well (despite some inexplicable typos, including getting aronson's name wrong, which i regularly did for years until he corrected me on it). although i tossed in a few constructive criticisms, i tried to keep it as positive as possible. originally had considered putting comments for every single entry, until i read that one of the entries was from a 10-yr-old kid. since i didn't necessarily know anything about the rest of the people who entered, i didn't want to risk trashing some kid's game online, which would accomplish nothing other than possibly discouraging him from continuing with chess variants. (i haven't looked at most of the 84-square entries, but based on what i've seen, and the comments of others, it looks like the quality level is very high. in the 40-square contest, there was a lot of good games, but there were few great games and a lot of horrible games - some of which were unplayable - so any honest appraisal of all the games would have contained a lot of negative comments.) <P> i could come up with a list of advice for judges, but most of it is pretty obvious stuff. the one thing that i'll mention here: take notes as you go along. judging will takes months (i think i used a year and a half, since entries were being submitted long before the deadline), written notes will make things a lot easier when it comes time to pick your winners and summarize your thoughts.