Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Fergus Duniho considers Ralph Betza, Charles Gilman, and Mats Winther the
most prolific. But I think that, although I may not have the most games, I
have the highest 'production rate'. Will he consider adding me to the
list?

Well, I do consider you one of the most prolific of prolificists, but I
don't consider it a compliment to call anyone a prolificist. I reject the
term for myself, reserving it for those who keep spinning off ideas without
putting time and effort into producing something of substance and quality.
George Duke, who coined the term, has routinely used it as a term of
disparagement as he has tried to exhort against proliferation. I'm
raising my voice against proliferation too, but I want to make it clear
that there is more to proliferation than quantity of Chess variants
created. It has more to do with the sacrifice of quality for the sake of
mindless quantity. As for Betza, Gilman, and Winther, what I think I said
was that they have created more games than other CV inventors have. I am
fairly certain that Gilman is a prolificist, but I will withhold judgment
on the others for now. Betza has been known to put time and effort into
some games, and Winther programs his games. These are positive qualities I
encourage in CV inventors.

Although I have stated previously (and still maintain) that -
 
'The inverse relation that inescapably exists between the quantity and
quality of the games comprising a collection has been conclusively proven
to me by labor-intensive experience.'

http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/descript.pdf
See 'worldview and games'- page 40.

- I expect few others to share my borderline-fanatical goal of discovering
and implementing a single, best or virtually-perfect chess variant.

At least, I recognize that many prolific game designers hold the logical
viewpoint that the most practical, achievable method to contribute to the
chess variant community lies in striking a balance between high quality
and high quantity backed with years of sustained effort.  Admittedly, I am
too selfish to put my name on (or at least, leave my name on) any game
creation that does not satisfy my highest, current standards of quality. 
In other words, I create game(s) for the chess variant community AND me. 
It is important (to me) not to leave me out of consideration.  I wish more
game inventors thought and acted likewise.

I consider myself a reformed prolificist who became a single-game
perfectionist in 2005.  By the way, that single game switched on me
recently in response to an unexpected, theoretical breakthrough ...

Spherical Chess 400
http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots

I strongly hope I got it right this time.

I respectfully caution all prolificists (whether they approve or
disapprove of the term) to be mindful that unless they are successfully
creating the very best, original chess variants in every class of games
they publish, then definitively they are only contributing to a 'number
pollution' of good games (presumably).  Furthermore, it is not possible
to create a best chess variant in any class without a foundation and range
of theory, experience and ingenuity to enable you to correctly see and
surpass the limitations of all of the pre-existing, best games within that
class.

If I can achieve this (i.e., creating a best game within a class) just
once, then I will be proud.  Obviously ... if any of you prolificists can
achieve this 5-10 times, then you have the right to be much more proud
than I.  Some of you who have 50-100 games (or more) in your catalog are
probably confident that you already have achieved this 5-10 times (or
more).  I hope so yet I remain skeptical that any of us have achieved this
even once.  I don't think some of you fully understand or respect what we
are up against by being creative with combinatorial game theory.

One of the things I'd like to look at in piece design is just how pieces
are used, and why it [piece design] is done. I believe there is a clear
difference between designing pieces and designing groups of pieces to be
used in one game. And there is another difference if themed pieces are
designed as a series of games. The best example of this is undoubtedly
Betza's Chess with Different Armies different armies. Using the same 8x8
board, he created several 'equal but different' armies. Each army has
its own theme, and they are [more or less] equally balanced against each
other. 

So, rather than being 'just' piece creation, Betza had a theme that ran
through several games, and the pieces were merely individual expressions
of the overarching idea. I will argue that my own series of shatranj
variants is similar, although I certainly do not claim such lofty goals as
Ralph was shooting for. I got dissatisfied with the weakest pieces in
historic shatranj, and started thinking of ways to 'correct the
problem'. Modern Shatranj was fun, and it got me thinking about
shortrange leapers, but by itself was pure piece design. Great Shatranj
was also initially a 'piece design' game, but it evolved away from being
just a place to showcase 2 nifty pieces. Every game after that in the
series was deliberately designed as part of an examination of 2 things:
shatranj-like pieces of steadily increasing power, and
a different history of the evolution of shatranj, an alternate reality, as
Graeme Neatham said, where shatranj evolved away from, instead of toward,
today's western [FIDE] chess. 

How good are they? Betza's CwDA idea was outstanding, and I will not
presume to judge any individual army. My shatranj games fall between good
and excellent. I think the idea behind them was excellent, but I think the
best game in the series by far is Opulent Lemurian Shatranj, designed by
David Paulowich [another prolificist]. That is a truly excellent game, and
better than any of mine.

Derek Nalls raises a good point. It is important to create Chess variants for yourself, not just for the chess variant community. I once saw a documentary on the Looney Tunes cartoons, and one of the things I still remember is that the cartoonists said they made the cartoons for themselves. To this day, the old Looney Tunes cartoons remain classics, while many other cartoons made for a mass audience are best forgotten. An important thing to remember is that the most-played games are the ones actually played by their inventors. If you don't think enough of your games to play them yourself, you shouldn't seriously expect others to take up playing them.

The point on which I would disagree with Derek is on the need to create one perfect game. I believe in pursuing quality, which is achievable, but not in seeking after perfection, which is elusive and counterproductive to variety. I enjoy the variety of having different Chess variants. They provide room for different strategies and tactics, and I enjoy the freshness of trying out games I haven't played before.

I generally agree with Derek when he writes, “I respectfully caution all prolificists (whether they approve or disapprove of the term) to be mindful that unless they are successfully creating the very best, original chess variants in every class of games they publish, then definitively they are only contributing to a 'number pollution' of good games (presumably).”

But I do take some issue with what follows, “Furthermore, it is not possible to create a best chess variant in any class without a foundation and range of theory, experience and ingenuity to enable you to correctly see and surpass the limitations of all of the pre-existing, best games within that class.” Classes can be defined narrowly or broadly, and some games may fall into multiple classes. For example, should my game Hex Shogi 91 be considered a member of the Shogi class, the hexagonal class, or the Hexagonal Shogi class? If you define classes narrowly enough, many a new game might be considered in a class of its own. In that case, your new game would be the best in its class by default, and I would urge CV inventors to go beyond striving to make a game the best in its class to doing what they can to make it hard for anyone else to make a better game in its class. In other words, don't just try to do better than what has been done, try to do better than what might be done later.

The pursuit of the 'best' or 'perfect' game of Chess is a lofty goal.
But I fear that it may be impossible to attain.

First, there are just too many variables. The potential dynamics of this
wargame has the possibility of reaching infinity. Consider just the wide
variety of pieces, then add the potential playing field and finally all
the possible in-game conditions. I think you will begin to visualize the
enormity of the challenge.

Of course, there are break-over points. Such as, a game which is too large
and complicated for current intellects to grasp. But that does not take
into account the evolution of the human mind. So, who knows, an extremely
large and complicated game at this point might in time find a receptive
audience in the future. ;-)

And there is no way to truly judge a game except through play. A critic
can use mathematical evaluation in an attempt to quantify the game, but
this leaves out various aspects which resist such. For example, fun. A
game can be considered mathematically 'perfect' but contain little or no
enjoyment.

One game which I truly enjoy is Nemoroth. Is this game mathematically
'perfect'? The conditionals are so convoluted that most players easily
make errors while playing. But that is its appeal, the ability to master
this game is a challenge in itself. The 'fun' of this game is not graded
toward 'contentment' but 'aggravation'. The Marquis de Sade would have
loved this game. ;-)

Nemoroth is a game which I always recommend to someone new to Chess
variants. Since it can utilize the pieces from a Mad Queen set(with a few
extra tokens), it is easy to try out. And it quickly unclogs the cobwebs
from their minds.

The 'best' that any developer can hope for is to create an enjoyable
game. And this can be accomplished in various ways.

Other people enjoy inventing new pieces and making a variant based on those pieces. Betza enjoyed this; he also enjoyed finding a mix of pieces just as strong as the FIDE pieces so one could have balanced games with different Chess armies. Other people enjoy combining themes of various variants to create something using a new theme.

For me, I like a variant where we quickly get out of the opening book and in to the 'street fighting' of trying to do tactics better than your opponent. I also like opening analysis of a variant, for the sake of opening analysis (not that said analysis is useful; then again opening analysis was not really useful in FIDE chess until the 20th century).

This is why I like Capa/Grand Chess variants; with two more pieces almost as powerful as the queen on the board, the games get very tactical very quick. Just like 'mad queen' chess before people discovered boring defenses like the Sicilian defense.

And, there are a lot of Capa opening setups one can choose from making it so there is never a chance of the opening getting stale. But that doesn't stop me from having done some opening analysis of my particular Capa openeing setup.

So, I generally don't invent variants because I find more joy in playing and studying variants already invented, and because there are already a lot of possibilities, even with the modest Capa variants.

- Sam

At the risk of making myself very impopular on this site:

To me, inventing Chess variants is like 'inventing' integer numbers.
Make a string of some 100 digits, and the odds are overwhelming that you
are the first ever in this universe to have mentioned this number. OK, so
you can marvel at your own private number, but who cares? Pritchard was
quoted to say: Ït takes about 10 seconds to invent a Chess variant, and,
unfortunately, some people do'.

It is just like with the numbers, it had better be very special in some
respect that you point out, or it cannot be considered an invention at
all. The axioms of number theory already imply the existence of all
integers, and states that there is an infinity of them, so the fact that
you can name a few that no one ever mentioned before adds absolutely zero
to what was already known. AFAIK, there is no website where people can
post large numbers they invented. Prime numbers are already a bit more
interesting, but still so common that it makes little sense to post
everyone prime you discover. Unless it is the largest prime ever
discovered so far. (Did you know that about 0.45% of all 100-digit numbers
is prime?) Some numbers are very interesting, though, and entire books
could be written about their deep mathematical properties. This applies to
numbers like pi, Euler's constant gamma, the base of natural logarithms e.
(They are not integers, though, but the analogy would work just as well for
real numbers.) 

IMO, it is much the same with Chess variants. The 'axioms' of a royal
piece, translation-invariant piece moves and replacement capture imply an
infinite set of Chess variants, and the fact you can mention one (or a
hundred) explicitly is as meaningless as designing a hundred huge
integers. A Chess variant is only worth mentioning if it it has some very
special properties not found in most other variants, or solve some
problems found in existing popular variants.

With Chess pieces the situation is similar. A Chess variant can be
worthwile as a vehicle to exercise a novel piece, but only if the piece is
interesting. But also novel pieces can easily be uninteresting
run-of-the-mill constructs. Merely bringing up novel combinations of the
Betza atoms does not make a worthwile piece. Breaking the eightfold
symmetry gives even more pieces that could be useful on boards of limited
size, but so what? It woulkd only be of interest if it creates some
interesting irreversibility in play (such as with the Pawn), or a weird
color-boundedness not seen in other pieces. Or some intersting end-games,
where it is difficult, but nevertheless possible, to mate a bare King. New
capture modes or other side effects of piece moves could be interesting,
but have the disadvantage to make the piece less 'Chess-like'.

To demonstrate that a variat you designed has any such properties that
could make it worthwile does require a lot of analysis effort.

To me, writing computer programs is like 'inventing' integer numbers.
After all, every computer program is just a long string of ones and zeros,
and that's just the binary representation of some integer. Likewise,
anything you can store on a computer -- such as books, pictures, audio
files -- these are just the equivalent of integers too. Surely, there must
be no creativity in writing novels, drawing pictures, or composing music,
because these can all be stored as computer files, full of nothing but
ones and zeroes, and any string of ones and zeroes is just the binary
representation of an integer.

That would be a valid comparison, if you would not restrict yourself to
WORKING computer programs. I completely agree that there is virtually zero
interest in computer programs that are merely random sequences of
instructions. (Or, if we are considering programs in a high-level
language, and we would restrict ourselves to programs that actually
compile, programs that are obtained by randomly applying the production
rules of the grammar describing the language to generate a valid
program.)

It is the fact that a computer program does something that would make it
different from garbage. Or the fact that a book tells a story, rather than
just being a jumble of random words. An extremely small fraction of
possible programs or possible books fit that requirement indeed. These are the jewels of information tschnology or litterature, like the Mad-Queen game is a diamond amongst the Chess variants.

The hard part is fleshing out the variant. A reasonable Zillions implementation can be done in the course of an afternoon. Once this is done, the game can be play tested. I have done this, and have concluded some ideas I had just don't make the games I like to play.

What Mr. Muller has done is far more impressive. He has written one of the strongest chess variant playing programs out there, and has done a lot of extensive research about the real value of some of the fairy pieces on various boards.

I like to see a variant fleshed out: Sample games, some basic opening theory, some mating problems, so people can get a sense of how to play the game before sitting down and playing the game. This is a lot more work than inventing a new kind of piece, which is why I think the type of real research Mr. Muller does is comparatively rare.

- Sam

Thanks for your kind words, Sam. Note it is in no way my intention, though, 
to belittle work of others, and praise my own. Obviously I could not even start 
programming if the variants I program for would not have been invented and singled 
out as 'jewels' by other. I never invented any worthwhile Chess variants myself. 
And I certainly don't think Mad Queen is the only diamond in the Chess-variant 
universe. There are many variants that I do like very much, and there are many 
wonderful pieces beside the orthodox 6 as well. But they are rare, as they 
should be, as it is the rarity that gives objects their value.

I liked, for example, Fergus' 'Storm the Ivory Tower', because I think it was really cool to do something with Smess' idea of making the board affect how pieces move, and it was nice to integrate this idea with some ideas in Chinese Chess. In addition, when people pointed out they didn't like the graphics, Fergus went to all of the effort to make a whole bunch of different graphics available in the Zillions preset.

I also think Mats has come up with a lot of interesting ideas and pieces, and I like how he always makes Zillions implementations and even tries to improve Zillions' gameplay.

- Sam

'Overall, the literature of chess variants demonstrates a random
scattering of 1000's of the infinite possible, stable [not in every
case!] arrangements of gameboards, pieces, rules, etc. Despite the
constructive intentions, hard work and abstraction by their various
inventors, statistically it is as if the population as a whole which
created this class of games did so with little guidance of intelligent
design. Virtually all of these games could have instead been randomly
generated by a computer program designed to intentionally create chaotic,
messy chess variants. This is the fate of all work undertaken without
correctly applying the most important game-design principles.'

Symmetrical Chess- Description
http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/descript.pdf
See section 'blueprints for incredibly bad inventions'- page 5.
_________________________________________________________

Although I prefer to colloquially express a permutations analogy 
['arrangements' is the keyword clue] instead of a number theory analogy,
there is an implicit overlapping and agreement of ideas.  I am especially
convinced of Muller's observation that 'invention' is commonly used in
an exaggerated or false manner within chess variant literature.  In my
opinion, 'discovery' is usually a much more appropriate and factual word
although I consider even its usage in some cases to be melodramatic.

For a hypothetical example ...

1.  Imagine that a person flashes thru all of the 12,000+ opening setups
of CRC (discovered by Reinhard Scharnagl) and notes which ones, by quickly applying simple quality criteria, are especially stable.

2.  This person eventually completes a short list of, for example, the 24
best (by his/her criteria).

3.  This person arrogantly and irrationally imagines himself/herself to be a prolific, genius inventor who has earned fame- not merely a discoverer.

4.  This person dishonestly applies for and receives US patents for every
one of his/her 24 favorite opening setups of CRC that were not already US
patented ... albeit by carefully, intentionally not mentioning CRC at all
to the patent examiners.

5.  This person takes the fact that he/she holds fraudulently-obtained US
patents for most of his/her 24 favorite opening setups of CRC as proof
that he/she is indeed a prolific, genius inventor.

[Of course, any resemblance to any real person(s) in this fictional story
is purely coincidental.]
_________________________

Would you agree to classify this person as a prolific, genius inventor?
I would not even classify this person as a discoverer.

The desire to be accurate would compel me to classify this person instead
as an intellectual property thief (only of non US-patented gameworks)
and a phoney inventor.

After all, Reinhard Scharnagl had already holistically covered the same
ground, as a discoverer, that this person falsely, subsequently staked a
claim to as his/her own solely.
_______________________________

Nonetheless, I reserve the view that 'invention' can occasionally be used
appropriately to refer to a small number of highly-unique chess variants.  I also think (as Duniho) that Muller fails to give sufficient credit to
original game inventors who have somehow managed to create complex chess
variants that are balanced, dynamic, stable and playable.  After all, the
odds against creating chess variants, compliant with every quality
criteria (known and unknown), by chance or luck are combinatorically high.  Instead, they are rare, valuable examples of intelligent design done
correctly.  Eight years filled with appr. 250 failed, diligent,
attempted-intelligent efforts on my part (until only one recent success,
in my tentative opinion) have convinced me that great games are highly
unlikely to be invented by chance or luck.

Sam,
Creating a new chess variants is 'trivial'. Yea it is as trivial as
writing a poetry. Anybody can write down some matching words in five minutes
but a good poetry is something non-trivial. Same goes here!

In following this thread, I've been struck by a few things. One is the
repeated statement that chess variants are easy to design. I will point
out that is only true for those of us who do things like post at
chessvariants. Any activity, existing and being practiced for many
centuries around the world, that is so cheap anyone can participate, which
has been engaged in by less than 1 in 1,000,000, is not all that easy. Even
among the millions and millions of chessplayers [of all chesses], there are
so few [western players] who even consider variants, though many will play
Bughouse or Blitz, or give odds of a pawn, piece, or move. These are all
considered training methods as well as games to be played, and seem to
gain/to have gained legitimacy that way. What's done here is the unusual.
In spite of the fact there are so many attempts to sell CVs commercially. 

Another comment was on the overall structure, or lack thereof, of variant
designs. Actually, I think there is structure of a sort. In some ways,
it's the very messy structure of life, of growing things. The great bulk
of the variants cluster around a few forms, a few ideas. Each may have its
own novelty, but most are clearly recognizable as chess. The 'strategy'
of these games is to stay close to the norm, and it's a rather
well-received strategy. [Disagree? What percentage of CVs use pawns? How
about kings, in the standard chess sense of king? This doesn't even
consider how often knights, bishops, etc are used. If I say all these
things show up in 99% of the games, would anybody object?] But there are
some games that leap off into totally different areas, like Ultima. These
games become new spreading centers when they are very successful. Shogi
and all the variants, many very large, that it spawned are possibly the
best example of what I mean. Chess variants have an evolutionary
structure.

I agree with Joe. I will also point out that songs and novels are much more
numerous than Chess variants. Some songwriters have written more songs than
the most prolific CV inventors have invented games, and some novelists have
written more novels. Does this mean that it's easy to write songs and
novels? As someone who has never written one song or novel, it doesn't
seem so.

Please forgive any offensive comments I have made in this, or any other
threads.  I just want to say, my wish is that the number of variants
created would lend to more people being interested in playing chess
variants.  I believe if the process spawns more interest, and more
players, that is a good thing.  That is my desire here.  I don't want to
offend anyone to create them.  I do wish, that the creations would
generate more interest though.  In a more blunt way, that the creations
serve the world as much as they do the creators of the games, if not more.
 My attempts to call for some standards, came out of this.  I am sorry if
such calls are seen as offensive to anyone.