Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

optimized chess 8H x 10W
http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/opti/

Out of the 3 options offerred for castling in SMIRF, I chose 'symmetric'
castling for Optimized Chess 8H x 10W.  This destroyed my plan to compare
the strengths of SMIRF and Gothic Vortex III at this game by letting them
fight it out at 3 minutes per move since the latter program exclusively
supports traditional or 'normal' castling as exists in Gothic Chess.

It is particularly gracious of Scharnagl to support symmetric castling
within SMIRF, esp. since he has stated clearly that he personally prefers
normal castling.  To date, I suspect that a good reason to prefer
symmetric castling has not been explained.

Any unique game is singular in nature, regardless of whether it exhibits
an east-west symmetry or asymmetry.  However, unlike E-W symmetrical games
which always exist as 1 unified, opening setup, E-W asymmetrical games are
split so they always exist irreducibly as 2 mirror-image opening setups
which can be transposed into one another.  Obviously, neither one is any
more or less proper than the other.  

Of course, most inventors only offer 1 of these 2 mirror-image, opening
setups as the asymmetrical game and most players, on the rare occasion
that a choice between 2 is offerred, will always prefer to learn using
just 1 of them.

Ideally, the king would be perfectly centered by E-W measure so that
castling would naturally be the same between the 'Mirror I' and 'Mirror
II' variants of Opti Chess.  Unfortunately, this is obviously impossible
as the '10W' in the game title gives a strong clue.  An odd, NOT even,
number of files must exist for it to be possible to perfectly center any
single piece E-W.

The opening setups in Mirror I and Mirror II have the 2 rooks balanced
perfectly, equidistantly, symmetrically E-W from the center of the board.

The opening setups in Mirror I and Mirror II have the king as close to the
exact E-W center of the board as possible which is unfortunately, the line
dividing the 5th and 6th files.  Consequently, the king rests on the 6th
file square in Mirror I and the 5th file square in Mirror II.

With normal castling, the king and rook will end-up on destination squares
that are asymmetrical from the exact E-W center of the board within both
variants AND on destination squares that are different when comparing both
variants.

With symmetric castling, the king and rook will end-up on destination
squares that are symmetrical and identical within and between both
variants.  Essentially, a simple average of the results of normal castling
for Mirror I & II is taken which yields whole numbers.  

By contrast, one can wonder (with dark humor) how the person(s) who
established the standard for normal castling kept from going crazy when
you realize ...

In deciding exactly where to drop the pieces kingside and queenside, in
turn, they had to decide whether it was more proper to round-off exactly
1/2 square's distance to zero square's distance or 1 square's distance.
Even Dr. Mark Thompson could not answer that one!

There has been a question, why SMIRF is supporting two other castling
modes than merely the standard castling. Despite of that this is exceeding
genuine CRC questions, here is the answer: SMIRF also is supporting Janus
Chess, which needs 's' = symmetric castling, and MBC (Embassy), which
needs 'm' = modern castling.

CRC follows the traditioal approach to place the king after castlings
either two squares distant from alpha-side or one square from omega-side.

My program counts 9819. Here are my restrictions:

* All pawns defended

* King between rooks

* No bishops together

* No RNBQMKABNR setup (patented; M = Rook + Knight; A = Bishop + Knight)

I'm curious where the number 12,118 comes from.

- Sam

Hi Sam, here is a link to all those 12118 valid CRC arrays:

http://www.chessbox.de/Down/crc_valid.rar

Which of them is not correct or doubled? Of course, I am not perfect, but
I need a precise hint if need be, if something really should be wrong.

Er, ..

'the queen is the the left of the queen.'

'the king is to the left of the king,'

This doesn't make sense !!

Hi Sam. Please note, that there is a rule number one (especially its second
part): 

1. the bishops have to be placed upon different colored squares; same rule
applies to the implicite bishop pieces: queen and archbishop (aligned to
FRC)

A real DEATHBLOW to email contacts with US American people

Well, because I am not interested in having my email postings 'legally' verified by the CIA, NSA and other 'peace securing' organisations, even without finding any suspicion against my person, I will no longer correspond with people from USA by email. Please try to avoid the USA to become a totalitarian country. 

So please join boycotting that raising freedom killing USA practice. 

Reinhard.

link

This is a real DEATHBLOW to computer-using German people, because it makes no distinction 'between, for example, a password cracker and a password recovery tool, or a utility designed to run denial of service attacks and one designed to stress-test a network.'

What may be worse, 'While making life more difficult for security consultants and sys admins, the new laws will, paradoxically, make it easier for police to use hacking tactics in gathering intelligence on suspects.'

link

Please try to avoid Germany's becoming a totalitarian country. Until this law is rescinded, I promise to drink no more Beck's--nothing but Heineken and Guinness. I hope you'll do the same.

SMIRF has a very romantic style of play, making bold sacrifices. For example, in thie game against Zillions of Games, where both sides have five seconds to make a move on a Pentium Core Duo 1.5Ghz, SMIRF has the black pieces and makes several bold sacrifices before finally delivering the mating blow to white:

1. e4 Ng6 2. f3 Nd6 3. d3 Af6 4. NI3 e6 5. Ng4 Ah5 6. I4 AI6 7. Nb3 h5 8. Nc5 Qc8 9. Ixh5 Axh5 10. NI3 Af4 11. g3 Ah6 12. h3 b6 13. Ng4 Aj5 14. Nb3 Mh8 15. Af2 BI6 16. Bj4

SMIRF gets ready to make his first sacrifice.

16... Mh5!? 17. NI3 Mxj4 18. Nxj5 Bxj5 19. Ag1 Mh5 20. Kf2 Mg5 21. f4

SMIRF now sacrifices both of his knights to continue the attack on White's King.

21... Nxe4+! 22. dxe4 Mxe4+ 23. Kg2 Nxf4+! 24. gxf4 Mxf4+ 25. Kh2 KI8 26. c3+ f5 27. MI5

SMIRF sacrifces his bishop in order to keep his attack lively.

27... j6! 28. Mxj5 Qb7 29. Bf3 Qxf3 30. Axf3 Mxf3+ 31. Kg2 Mf4+ 32. Kh2

Black can now force mate; finding this mate is left as an exercise to the reader.

In another game, SMIRF plays ChessV, with SMIRF having the white pieces and each side given 30 seconds to decide their move on a Pentium Core Duo 1.5Ghz. Here is how that game went:

1. Ng3 e5 2. Mh3 Ne7 3. Nd3 Neg6 4. e3 d6 5. f4 exf4 6. exf4 Ad7 7. Af2 Axh3 8. Axh3 Ke8 9. Bg4 Bh4 10. Bd7+ Kd8 11. Qe1 Ne7 12. Bf2 Nhg6 13. Nf5 Bxf2 14. Kxf2 c6 15. Nxe7 Nxe7 16. Qe2 d5 17. Nc5 Ng6 18. Rje1 Kc7 19. Bxc6 Kxc6

At this point, even though White is down material, he can force mate. The mate, again, is left as an exercise for the reader.

P.S.: could you please specify the PGN notation concerning your 10x8 extended castling rules? Because traditional O-O or O-O-O would not be always sufficient, as I presume.

Zillions' game playing style is, in comparison, sterile and drawish. To make a comparison, Zillions is Kramnik's ice and SMIRF is Topalov's fire.

I am just thinking it over, whether to support also free castling in SMIRF - the variation, where the King makes at least two steps, to enable an unambigious move entering via a GUI. Then a lot of other chess variants would be able to be supported. But there is a question left: how is the regular notation for those castlings? O-O and O-O-O would not at all be sufficient here.

SMIRF is downloadable at: http://www.10x8.net/down/SmNewSetup.exe

Well, having no suggestions yet, I made some myself:

All castlings placing the King three squares from the left white side will be written as O-O-O (standard).
All castlings placing the King two squares from the right white side will be written as O-O (standard).
All other castlings will be written e.g. O-O-b terminated by the King's target column letter, here 'b'.

Would that be acceptable?

- Sam

In the case of a real free castling there is the possibility to also have castlings, wherein the king is making only one single step. Then an encoding as e.g. Kd1 is not sufficient to distinguish a castling move from a simple King's move. Moreover in traditional chess O-O and O-O-O is used. Thus the representation should be very related to that. using O-O-x has more common parts to those traditional forms than O-x. Thus I am preferring that. 
By posting here I intended to investigate the status quo of writing down castling moves in variants, before I would start to implement such abilities in SMIRF's successor application Octopus.

But why the limitation to set up queen and archbishop on different coloured squares, when they can change the square colour by moving like rook resp. knight?

Umm, I did not even know this rule existed. WinBoard restricts the shuffle only to have the Bishops on different colors. I agree the rule makes no sense. I have also seen descriptions that did not allow the Bishops to be on adjacent squares. (That also seemed to make little sense.)

The Interactive Diagram would have to struggle to enforce this rule, because there is no way to tell it directly that a pair of pieces of different types would have to be placed on different square shades. As a work-around you could 'mark' the shades by piece type, by defining the nominal start position with a back rank RBRBNKNCQA, so that RNQ are on dark squares, and BKCA on light. You can then order a sequence of shuffles, RNQ,BKCA,QA,!BNRKC .

The first shuffle solely serves to put Q on a random dark square, the second to put A on a random light square, and the third then randomly swaps the two. The remaining pieces then have to be shuffled the usual way, i.e. the Bishops would have to go on opposit shades (indicated by the ! prefix).

I guess it would be useful to extend the shuffling capabilities of the Diagram with a prefix to indicate the piece should stay on the same color as it was in the nominal setup. Sy This would be indicated by #, then the shuffle instructions could be K#QC#AR!BN,QA, with a nominal setup where Q and A start on different shades.