Comments by crazytom
Game Courier Logs. View the logs of games played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]My reason for using the URL to tweak settings is that I make copious use of bookmarks, so that I can get to any game with just a few keystrokes. And if I want to use the positions from my games as desktop backgrounds, this is most easily done if I can construct a URL that produces an image using my preferred piece set and the appropriate orientation. I've done this happily for many of the games I've played via Game Courier, but I can't do it for a game of chess. I can look at the board from Black's side, or I can use the Alfaerie pieces, but for some reason I can't do both.
Okay, I think I understand now. I had been thinking of the Abstract piece set as the default, not realizing that it was in fact a setting which had overridden a previous default. So it makes sense that I can't override it in the URL, especially now that I've gone and learned a bit about the GET and POST methods of form submission. Here's a related thought (related from a user's perspective, anyway). When I enter my userid and view a game in which it is my opponent's turn, the board is displayed, along with a message saying 'It is not your turn yet', etc. But the board is shown from my opponent's perspective. (Actually, a quick check of my current games seems to indicate that it is shown from the perspective of the player to move [i.e. my opponent] in Chess and Xiangqi, but from the perspective of the first [Black] player in Shogi.) Perhaps it would be more user-friendly if specifying a userid ensured that the board would be shown from that player's perspective.
Chess/Xianqi/Shogi Tournament #1. Enter the First Chess/Xiangqi/Shogi Game Courier Tournament![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Game Courier Ratings. Calculates ratings for players from Game Courier logs. Experimental.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Castling in Chess 960. New castling rules for Fischer Random Chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The rule itself is very simple:
The king moves to the c-file and the a-side rook moves to the d-file, or the king moves to the g-file and the h-side rook moves to the f-file.
That's it. One sentence (not including the restrictions on when it is permissible to castle, which are identical in all the rules discussed on this page).
The Chess480 rule, even though it was introduced as 'an appeal for simplicity', is no simpler, and arguably more complicated than the FRC rule.
Of course these are not the only possible rules. If I had been asked, before learning about FRC, how the castling rule should be generalized for random starting posiitions, I probably would have said that the king moves half the distance (rounded up) toward the rook, and the rook moves to the other side of the king. This rule is left-right symmetric and matches the Chess480 rule in 11/16 of the possible positions. But without the need for awkward special cases, it is in my opinion simpler.
I am predisposed to like symmetry, and it wouldn't have occurred to me to choose an asymmetric rule like the one in FRC. Yet there is something appealing about the asymmetry, particularly in this context where it produces twice as many actually distinct positions. For this reason I'm still inclined to prefer the FRC rule.
Game Courier Logs. View the logs of games played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Rules of Chess: Castling FAQ. Frequent asked questions about castling.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]What specifically is it that you think is defined wrongly?
About Game Courier. Web-based system for playing many different variants by email or in real-time.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]One problem: when I change the background image in a game of Xiàngqí or Shogi, the 'Verify Your Move' page shows the new image, but the 'Background' field is empty, and when I submit the move it reverts to the default image.
I've just moved in two games: one of Xiàngqí and one of Shogi. In each case my goal was to make a move and to change from the default background image to a new background image, hoping that this new background setting would be stored in the log so that the new image would be displayed the next time I view the game. I did some experimenting before submitting the moves, trying to get as much information as I could. I tried performing the actions of selecting a background image and entering a move in four different orders (described below, where, not knowing what might be useful, I've tried to err on the side of too much detail rather than too little). Each trial began in a new browser tab. The various trials did not exhibit all the same intermediate behavior, but as far as I can tell the end results are the same. Of course I could only submit each move once; after trying all four orders with each of the two games, I then repeated one of the trials before submitting each move.
- Trial 1: I enter my move in the 'Moves' text box, select the desired image from the 'Background' dropdown menu, and click the 'Verify' button, without having clicked the 'Modify' button. The verification page loads. My move is shown in the movelist, and the resulting position is displayed. The new background is displayed, but the 'Background' field is blank. At this point I submit the Xiàngqí move.
- Trial 2: I select the desired image from the 'Background' menu and click 'Modify', without having entered a move. The page reloads; the board is still shown with the original background image, but the new image is now selected in the 'Background' menu. I then enter a move in the 'Moves' text box and click 'Verify'. The verification page loads. My move is shown in the movelist, and the resulting position is displayed. The new background is displayed, but the 'Background' field is blank.
- Trials 3 and 4 begin in the same way: I enter a move in the 'Moves' text box, select the desired image from the 'Background' menu, and click 'Modify'. The page reloads. The new background image is displayed and remains selected in the 'Background' menu. My move is now shown in the dropdown movelist, and the resulting position is displayed. The 'Moves' text box is now empty. I then continue in two different ways.
- Trial 3: Without entering anything, I click 'Verify'. A page loads, with the heading 'Verify Your Move', but otherwise identical to the usual page where one enters a move. The new background image is still displayed and remains selected in the 'Background' menu. But the move which I just entered seems to have disappeared: it is no longer shown in the movelist, and the position displayed is the one prior to this move. I enter the move again in the 'Moves' text box, and click 'Verify' again. The usual verification page loads. My move is shown in the movelist, and the resulting position is displayed. The new background image is displayed, but the 'Background' field is blank.
- Trial 4: I immediately reenter my move and click 'Verify'. The verification page loads. My move is shown in the movelist, and the resulting position is displayed. The new background image is displayed, but the 'Background' field is blank. At this point I submit the Shogi move.
I had a look at the source for the verification page in question, and I think the problem is due to a missing angle bracket in the < SELECT > tag corresponding to the background field. Also the < /SELECT > tag appears to be missing altogether, but this doesn't seem to cause problems for either of the browsers I've tried. When I edited a local copy of the source, inserting the missing angle bracket was enough to make Opera place the appropriate value in the background field.
That is, for one of my games the source has
< SELECT NAME='crazytom_bgimage'when it should have
< SELECT NAME='crazytom_bgimage' >
Thanks for adding these new features and taking the time to work out the kinks. As far as my efforts are concerned, I figure the opportunity to change to something other than shogi-simple.png is easily worth looking at a little HTML.
I had thought it was only the colors in shogi-simple.png that bothered me, but I think you're right about the thick borders. I'm currently using shogi-blue.png in one of my games; it's equally simple, but the more sedate colors and the thin borders are a vast improvement in my opinion.
Bishops
. Commercial four-player game.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I see nothing inappropriate with using the word 'ugly'. I share the anonymous poster's opinion of the graphic, primarily because of the garish colors. But I have no objection to the appearance of the board and pieces in the photograph on the linked page. Rating your own game, however, really is inappropriate. And I don't think you'll find many people willing to pay nearly fifty dollars merely for the right to find out whether a game is good. To suggest that we should do so takes a great deal of chutzpah.
Of course, when you play against Topalov, you will find it very difficult to defend correctly after he sacrifices both of his rooks.
Game Courier Tournament #2. Sign up for our 2nd multi-variant tournament to be played all on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Actually, Joe, by my count you can have eighth place all to yourself, due to the Sonneborn-Berger tiebreaker. I'll just sit back here in ninth and wish our game of Maxima had gone differently. Further congratulations to Gary Gifford for an impressive 11/12 performance.
Index page of The Chess Variant Pages. Our main index page.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Chess Variant Pages Rating System. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i think the rating system in place is just fine, what is the point of 'neutral', what is that, it isn't even a rating, and isn't 'none' pretty much the same.I will address the second, fourth, and fifth independent clauses of this sentence.
2. The point of a 'neutral' or 'average' rating is to allow users to express ambivalence.
4. Correct. As the system now stands, anyone can skim the rules of a game, think about it for thirty seconds, and proclaim that it's the best thing ever. But someone who has played a game numerous times, or analyzed in detail, and comes to the conclusion that it's nothing special (neither very good nor very bad) has no way to express that opinion and have it taken into account in the computation of the game's average rating. The fact that 'Neutral' or 'Average' is not a rating in the current system is the primary reason why change is desirable.
5. Correct. 'None' is not at all the same as 'Neutral' or 'Average'. 'None' is not a rating, communicates nothing about the user's opinion of a game, and has no effect on the average/overall rating. But a neutral rating would communicate something (i.e. that the user considers the game to be neither very good nor very bad) and does affect the overall rating.
In my opinion, in order for a rating system to be useful, it must include one rating which corresponds to neutrality, and at least two ratings on each side, so that both positive and negative opinions can be expressed with various degrees of intensity. The current system satisfies neither of these criteria and is therefore not useful. The proposed system satisfies both, and I think it could be useful if used properly (a big 'if'). It's interesting to note that the labels (ranging from 'Poor' to 'Excellent') are still biased toward boosting people's egos, but this is relatively unimportant: the meaning of the ratings is carried by their underlying numerical values, as long as it is clear which is the neutral rating.
If it's the choice of words that bothers you, I readily concede that 'Neutral' is not the best possible word for this new rating. 'Average' is significantly better, but still not perfect.
On another topic, I'm not sure I like the proposed popularity ranking. I'm guessing that under this system, the most 'popular' items on these pages would be the Rules of Chess FAQ, an old flame war regarding the Gothic Chess patent, and Navia Dratp.
Fischer Random Chess. Play Bobby Fischer's randomized Chess variant on Game Courier. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I was reading about GAME Code in the Developer's Guide, and following its advice I looked at the Pre-Game code for FRC. It appears that this preset does not generate the 960 starting positions with equal probability. Of the 960 possible positions, 216 have the white king starting on b1 or g1, 336 on c1 or f1, and 408 on d1 or e1. But the preset places the king on these six squares with equal probability. The easiest way to generate all 960 positions with equal probability is to place the bishops first, then the queen and knights, and finally the king and rooks.
Suppose we place the bishops first. There are 4 squares available to each bishop, and therefore 4*4 = 16 ways to place the pair. Next we place the queen on one of the 6 remaining squares. Then the knights; there are 5*4/2 = 10 ways to place the two knights on the five remaining squares. Finally three squares are left for the king and rooks, and there is only 1 way to place them, since the king must be between the two rooks. Thus there are 16*6*10*1 = 960 possible positions.
The important point is that, in the above counting, the number of placements available to any given piece type is independent of where the preceding pieces were placed. For example, once the two bishops are placed, there are 6*10 = 60 ways to place the remaining pieces, and this is true whether the bishops were placed on a1 and f1, or on d1 and e1, or wherever. Thus, by placing the bishops first, we select one of 16 classes of positions, with the same number of positions in each class. It is therefore 'safe' to place the bishops first.
By contrast, if we place the king first, then the number of possibilities for the remaining pieces depends on where the king is placed. If the king is on b1, then one rook must be on a1, and the other can be anywhere from c1 to h1. Thus with the king on b1 there are 1*6 = 6 ways to place the rooks. But if the king is on c1, there are 2*5 = 10 ways to place the rooks, and if the king is on d1, there are 3*4 = 12 ways to place the rooks. (Also the number of possibilities for the bishops depends on how the preceding pieces are distributed between the two colors of squares.) By placing the king first we select one of 6 classes of positions, but the various classes contain different numbers of positions, and therefore this method skews the probabilities.
I think that the bug described by Greg is somehow a result of the site's move last August. If I'm not mistaken, it is only comments made before 2005-08-27 that have this problem. If you posted such a comment, you can 'edit' it, and simply resubmit it without making any changes. The HTML will then be displayed properly.
Dimension X. Chess on two planes - one with the usual chess pieces, the other with spooky trans-dimensional pieces with strange interactions. (2x(8x8), Cells: 128) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I have one question, which for some reason I didn't think about until now. The starting position on the FIDE board has the familiar mirror symmetry, while the Dimension X board has rotational symmetry. Thus the full starting position is asymmetric. Is there a reason for this? I would expect this asymmetry to introduce an imbalance (probably only a small one, since the trans-dimensional pieces need several moves to cross the board). It looks as though the white trans-dimensionals may find it easier to attack on the kingside, and the black ones on the queenside.
Rococo. A clear, aggressive Ultima variant on a 10x10 ring board. (10x10, Cells: 100) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]1-2: The rules on this page state quite clearly, 'Swaps with Swappers may be combined with other captures.' Also, the animated illustration unambiguously shows a Chameleon swapping with a Swapper and capturing a Withdrawer, a Long Leaper, and an Advancer in the same move.
3: The only requirement for promotion is that the Cannon Pawn's move end on the 9th or 10th rank. There is no restriction on where the move must begin. Therefore a Cannon Pawn may promote after moving along the 9th rank.
4: A move to an edge square is permitted only when necessary for a capture. Moves from edge squares are unrestricted. Suicide by an immobilized piece on an edge square is surely not a move to an edge square, and is therefore permitted.
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