Comments by SamTrenholme
Looking at the program very quickly, it looks like not too many new variants have been added to the game. What has been added, under the hood, is support for a lot more piece types, especially in the 8x10 and 8x12 boards.
For example, it is now possible to make a preset that plays the 'Crowned' pieces variant I proposed a couple of months ago. It is also possible to play with the 'Sage' (Camel + Bishop) and 'Tower' (Camel + Knight) pieces on the 8x10 and 8x12 board (As per the discussion in this thread). One thing ChessV doesn't have yet is these 'new' pieces on a 10x10 board (I feel the Sage makes more sense on a 10x10 board than on a 8x10 or 8x12 board, because otherwise there are problems with first-move smothered mate threats; perhaps a game with 'Sages' and possibly 'Towers' will make sense if we leave an empty square besides the king; I can see an 8x12 setup with the usual FIDE pieces, two sages, another faerie piece, and an empty square besides the king to stop smothered mate threats). However, to make these variants requires reading the extensibility document included with ChessV and making your own preset.
I plan on making ChessV presets for some of the ideas discussed in those threads, which I may be able to release next week (The only way I'm able to take time to post this is because I'm killing time while Cygwin downloads).
Anyway, Greg, this is really great work and I'm glad to see a new version of ChessV!
- Sam
- Sam
Fairy-Max
. Free open source chess variant software.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]- There is no documentation on how to actually use fairy max. The only way to figure out how to use the program is to read the C source.
- The C source code does not contain any license text. I would like to know under what license the program is released, and whether the terms are OSI-approved Open Source compatible (GPL, etc.)
- The program itself has no built-in help
- There is also WinBoardF, which has support for a few chess variants. However, there is no documentation about how to interface WinboardF with fairy max.
- Sam
P.S.: I will change my rating once documentation is available to actually interface fairy max with WinboardF. I will change my rating to one even higher if a well integrated fairy max + WinboardF package is made, which doesn't require any messing around with .ini files to play fairy chess against the computer.
A good social game is one with easy rules that people can learn quickly; I'm thinking the card game 'spoons': One less spoon in the center than the number of players; each person has four cards, gets one card from the left, passes one card to the right. When someone has 4-of-a-kind, they grab for a spoon; then everyone else grabs a spoon, irregardless of whether they have a 4-of-a-kind. The last person won't have a spoon, and is eliminated and the next round begins.
Chess is not a social game; women in particular are very uncomfortable playing Chess because of its competitive aspects. It's a game where men are in a contest to see who the better man is. Since, these days, a computer can give the world champion a hell of a game, I don't see the point of seeing how well I can do something a computer can do much better.
I can see why chess clubs are dying out and going to the Internet; people generally don't play chess to make new friends, and the game is no fun when two players have different skill levels.
- Sam
Capablanca Random Chess. Randomized setup for Capablanca chess. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]- Sam
ChessV. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]- Sam
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]- Sam
Castling in Chess 960. New castling rules for Fischer Random Chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Kasparov's Premiere at Shogi. Chess world champion plays a game of Shogi.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]- Sam
Gary Gygax death. Announcement of Gary Gygax's death.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Seirawan Chess. invented by GM Yasser Seirawan, a conservative drop chess (zrf available).[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I only have your word about the unpleasant correspondence you allegedly had with someone involved with Seirawan chess; unless they threatened a lawsuit or what not, I would just brush it off as them having a bad hair day.
10x8 Variants. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Basically, the computer in front of you is a complex adding machine. It doesn't think nor recognize patterns the way a human does. Yes, we've made the adding machines complex enough that they can do things like play music and movies, and even play Chess well. But we haven't been able to have it so computers can, for example, translate from one language to another without the translation being so bad it's just about not readable.
Nor have we been able to get a computer to play a game with a high branching factor, like Go or Arimaa well. Computers play Chess very differently from humans; they just look at all of the possible moves, using 'alpha-beta' pruning to determine which moves are and are not looking at. They don't recognize patterns; they just see possible future moves and how much material they have.
A computer needs to evaluate millions of possible positions to play as well as a human who only looks at dozens of possible positions. Computers aren't able to really see a given position to evaluate how good it is; they only play as well as we do because they basically brute force through just about every possible chess move so many moves down.
Games like Go and Arimaa are good because brute force just doesn't work with these games. In order to have a computer play these games well, we will have to make a true AI breakthrough. Which will probably have consequences far beyond just having a computer playing some abstract game really well.
- Sam
Seirawan Chess. invented by GM Yasser Seirawan, a conservative drop chess (zrf available).[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Maybe one way of handling the pawns on a 10x10 board is to make the pawns a little stronger. One idea that comes to mind is using Winther's scorpion pawn to make the lowly pawn more powerful. Another piece that is weaker on the 10x10 board is the knight; Strong, in Opulent Chess handled this problem by having the knight also being able to move like a rook, but only square (knight + wazir). I myself would make it so the knights could also jump exactly three squares diagonally (over other pieces, if needed), or have it so one knight can also jump three squares diagonally, and the other knight can jump three squares like a rook.
A lot of 10x10 variants were proposed in the 10 contest.
Joker80 soundly defeated ChessV 0.9.3 and Zillions of Games, even with a time handicap in both cases.
Anyway, some issues:
- I can't set up a custom opening setup in Winboard, save the opening setup, and have Winboard read the setup without complaining the file is unreadable
- It would be nice if Joker80 had support for the 'free' castling used by Grotesque and Univers Chess (not to mention my own humble contribution to 10x8 chess, Schoolbook)
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]- White's king moves to b1; White's queenside rook moves to c1. Black's king moves to b8; Black's queenside rook moves to c8.
- White's king moves to c1; White's queenside rook moves to d1. Black's king moves to c8; Black's queenside rook moves to d8.
- White's king moves to d1; White's queenside rook moves to e1. Black's king moves to d8; Black's queenside rook moves to e8.
- White's king moves to h1; White's kingside rook moves to g1. Black's king moves to h8; Black's kingside rook moves to g8.
- White's king moves to I1; White's kingside rook moves to h1. Black's king moves to I8; Black's kingside rook moves to h8.
While putting links here, here are some other 8x10 starting arrays: Aberg's variation and Paulovich's variation, and, of course, this exhaustive list.
- Sam
Since there is also a table of piece values on this page, I should point out that playtesting with almost any program shows that the Archbishop values given here are way too low: A+P typically beat Q, and A+A+P beats C+C, in any game phase. See the discussion on the page of th Aberg variant.
My reply: I looked at the discussion and just saw a flame war. Do you have a table of your proposed values for pieces in 8x10 chess? And, yes, implementing Schoolbook's castling in Joker80 would be nice, in addition to supporting more of the proposed 8x10 opening setups.
- Sam
I note you make pawns less valuable than they are in 8x8 FIDE chess; I think a big reason is because, with three powerful pieces on the board, the game is more tactical and less strategic.
- Sam
Reverse Symmetry. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This one one of the possible Displacement chess opening setups.
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I get the feeling that XP's or Vista's unzipper is fussy in a way that Winzip accidently breaks. As an aside, I have never had problems unzipping files in Windows XP that were generated with the *NIX zipping utilities, even after using a special program called 'advancedcomp' to make the .zip file about 5% smaller than an ordinary .zip file.
I will post a report about ChessV 0.9.3 tomorrow.
I would like to thank Greg for the update, and for this excellent, free program.
- Sam