Comments/Ratings for a Single Item
I agree that the way the bishop can change its square color through the singularity is inconsistent, as it actually should go in the reverse direction. There can be interesting variations on the subject, some of which you just described. The simplest one can be to cut the board in half vertically, and then join it again by its borders. As a result, there will be no full U-turns, and the bishop will have five directions of movement in the board's central part, like in usual three-player chess made of three 4x8 board parts, which share somewhat similar geometry.
As a minor observation, it can be pointed out that this variant has natural reverse symmetry, so the black king and queen should switch their places to preserve their initial square colors. It also can be noted that the a and h pawns can capture each other from the initial position, so, there must be an artificial restriction to stop them from that.
Let's round up the nominations:
David Paulowich nominated Tiger Hunt and Sort of Almost Chess. His nomination of his own Opulent Lemurian Shatranj does not count, because inventors cannot nominate their own games.
H. G. Muller has nominated Duck Chess, and Jean-Louis Cazaux has seconded it.
Jean-Louis Cazaux has nominated Superschaak, and the games mentioned in his recent book More Chess and More Than Chess Expanded C., Sac C., Opulent C., Elven C., Gross C., Hectochess, and Enhanced Courier C. H. G. Muller has said to him
The variants from your latest book are all good candidates. But they do belong to a family of closely related games, which was the theme of the book. So also here I suggest that we should not pick too many of those in a row, but regularly also pay attention to variants that involve more exotic rules that put them outside the scope of your book.
I'll take this as a second for these games.
H. G. Muller has also nominated Superchess, Paco Shako, Musketeer Chess, Tenjiku Shogi, Chu Shogi, and Spartan Chess. Assuming that Superchess is Superschaak, Jean-Louis seconded it.
Edward Webb nominated Metamachy.
Duck Chess for June?
Because we have not provided much support for this game on the Chess Variant Pages, I would like to hold off on that. I am completely unfamiliar with this game, and I have not found any record of games played. In the meantime, there are some other games that have received a nomination and a second.
I'd like to second Gross chess!
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, May 31, 2023 08:04 AM UTC:I made an overview of the nominated variants, indicating which support they have on CVP. The fav. column indicates the number of people that have favorited it (discounting the inventor). The feat. column indicates whether the variant was already featured before (which I think should disqualify it).
An 'ic' in the column for Interactive Diagram means a Diagram exists in the comments to the article, which could easily be moved into the latter.
| name | 2nd | art. | ID | GC | Jocly | Java | ZoG | fav. | feat. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tiger Hunt | X | X | 1 | ||||||
| s.o. Almost C | X | X | X | 1 | |||||
| Duck C | X | X | X | 3 | |||||
| Expanded C | X | X | X | X | 7 | ||||
| Sac C | X | X | X | 4 | |||||
| Opulent C | X | X | ic | X | X | 8 | X | ||
| Elven C | X | X | X | X | 3 | ||||
| Gross C | X | X | ic | X | X | 9 | X | ||
| Hectochess | X | X | X | X | 3 | ||||
| Enhanced Courier C | X | X | X | X | 2 | ||||
| Superschaak | X | ||||||||
| Pako Shako | X | X | 4 | ||||||
| Musketeer C | X | ic | X | 6 | |||||
| Tenjiku Shogi | X | ic | X | X | 7 | ||||
| Chu Shogi | X | X | X | X | X | 18 | X | ||
| Spartan C | X | ic | X | X | 11 | X | |||
| Metamachy | X | X | X | X | 10 | ||||
Superschaak / Superchess and Monarch only exists here as a book review. It appears that Tiger Hunt is also invented by David himself, so that the nomination probably should not count.
Since it is 'late in the day', I think our only options for June are pages that do not require any work. A negative point for Metamachy is that we already featured a very similar game from the same inventor last month. Of the remaining variants Expanded Chess seems to have the best support on CVP and largest popularity here. It also has an excellent rule-description page. Due to the participation of two bent sliders it is sufficiently different in character from the recently featured variants. Only minus is that there is no Jocly implementation for it. But very few variants have one.
Hi. I also support Expanded Chess. I also love Skica from Daniel Z, but it is more recent and may probably wait in the queue line.
I am also very curious about Duck Chess. Is there a GC available to play it? If yes I would try it. If others do, maybe it could be nominated in one of the next months.
Concerning ZoG, I have made files for many variants. That of Metamachy exists since 2012. I have it for all of mine, and many others of similar types. One day, I will take time to clean them up and upload them here. I'm quite busy righ now so I can't do it for tomorrow :=)
Gross chess seems to be a good nomination. I may also vote for Ralph Betza's Chess on a really big board.
The feat. column indicates whether the variant was already featured before (which I think should disqualify it).
None of the games you marked as featured are mentioned on this page as having been featured. They are all marked in the database as being primary links, but that is not the same thing as having been featured. So, it should not disqualify them.
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, May 31, 2023 05:49 PM UTC:Well, when you go to one of these articles, a big black textbox at the top says:
This is one of our Featured Games. Click the link to check out our others.
So you'd better do something about that, then...
If we are going to re-feature primary links, Chu Shogi would be the obvious choice for June: it is favored the most by far, and has a ZoG page and a Jocly page in addition to what the other vcandidates have.
So you'd better do something about that, then...
For now, I have just added a false to the condition to keep it from showing.
Aurelian Florea wrote:
I'd like to second Gross chess!
Max Koval wrote:
Gross chess seems to be a good nomination.
Since these two additional seconds for Gross Chess came in today, it seems to have the most support, and I have made it the featured variant for June.
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jun 1, 2023 06:10 AM UTC:That is not how it works for other variants that have a Zillions implementation. These have a separate page for that, which can be made through the usual article-submission system.
I don't really see the benefit of that system, other than that it can be seen already in the index for which variants a Zillions implementation exists. (But this is more a result of the low quality of the index pages.) But is seems more important to have unified treatment of all variants, even when that treatment itself is rather silly.
Guys, this is still confusing for me. What is the difference between a Featured Variant and a Featured Game?
If there is one, it would be great to explain it somewhere, preferably on this page for Featured Chess Variant (similarly to what is done for Recognized Variant of the Month).
Also the criteria could be discussed. Why having one on ZoG entry now that this program is no longer supported and cannot run on many computers? And many CV do have their ZoG since long time, just they are not on the CVP but are on ZOG web page. And for years, so this is not relevant at all in my opinion. Why not considering other criterias, internal to CVP such as Favorite Games and Top Games on Game Courier?
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jun 1, 2023 12:04 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 11:35 AM:Why not considering other criterias, internal to CVP such as Favorite Games and Top Games on Game Courier?
Because that might not result in the desired outcome, obviously.
As it was noted, I think that probably the best way to explore this feature is to include little-known and original games for further discussion and possible improvement, maybe alongside common CVs. For example, Chess on a soccer ball by David Cannon.
Would Opulent Chess be a good one to feature in July? It has been played on Game Courier every year since 2015, it is supported in both ChessV and Zillions-of-Games, and it is one of the more favorited games. Also, it is already marked as a primary link, and games marked as primary have also been described as "Featured Games" even if they haven't been featured on every page for a month. To resolve the discrepancy between these, I would like to get those games featured in the sense described on this page, or, perhaps in some cases, unmark them as primary.
Opulent Chess is now the featured variant for July, 2023. Would someone who has appropriate pieces for this game be willing to set it up and take a photograph to use on the homepage? If I do it myself, I'll have to substitute Leopards for Lions.
It is a good choice as far as I can see!
A. M. DeWitt wrote on Mon, Jul 31, 2023 04:21 PM UTC:If you want feature a large Shogi variant, Chu Shogi is a prime example.
- It has been played on Game Courier a lot, and was the dominant game in Japan for centuries.
- It is playable several other programs as well, including LiShogi.
- The page itself, provides a good example of formatting that is less image-heavy while still meeting the high bar set for the formats of featured variants, adn received editorial approval a long time ago.
The only thing left is for people other than me to nominate and second it (and to not be vetoed).
If you want a choice that is less intimidating, Seireigi is another great pick, as it only changes the promotions of the back-rank pieces in Shogi while keeping everything else the same. Although it is a standard-size Shogi variant, and is still quite new, it does meet many of the requirements already.
- It had been played on Game Courier (albeit only a few times).
- It has also been programmed in Ludii. The piece names in Ludii are slightly outdated as of right now becaue the process of adding and updating games is quite slow, but all the moves are up-to-date.
- Furthermore, it can even be played over-the-board using a Shogi set. A special PDF file has been made for this purpose.
- The article itself is a good example of how to craft a well-formatted article that is a bit more image-heavy, and has received editorial approval, albeit only recently.
The only thing holding Seireigi back from being eligible is that this post is from its inventor, so it needs to be nominated and seconded (and not vetoed) by people other than me.
I still consider that it should be paid attention to two internal criterias of the Chessvariant pages:
1)The Top Games on Game Courier https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/listgames.php?max=200
2)The Favorite Games by the readers of this website https://www.chessvariants.com/index/favorites.php
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Jul 31, 2023 08:33 PM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 04:21 PM:I second the nomination of Chu Shogi.
Chu Shogi is now the featured variant for August, 2023.
That should give visitors plenty to "Chu" on. #BadPunNoCookie
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The Singularity you refer to is indeed a very interesting game, and perhaps the most elegant design of a board with an irregular topology. I would second its nomination for being featured, except that we cannot feature a variant for which we don't even have a rule-description page. But perhaps I should make one.
The board is very interesting. The way it is represented, with the circles inside the rectangular grid, is probably not the best way for getting intuitively clear moving. The problem is that the cell corners where a circle touches a line (so on the mid-line of the board) suffer a degenerate distortion, making two different directions coincide and the angle at the corner collapse to zero degree. There are other representations that do not suffer from this.
The singularity is created by taking a 12x6 rectangular board (of which two 2x2 corners are cut away) and fold it back on itself to connect the left half of the upper edge to the right half. If you do that with a sheet of paper, it warps it into a cone, where the singularity the top of the cone. Projecting the checkered pattern on a plane perpendicular to the cone axis (i.e. looking at it from a large distance above the top) would produce a pattern where all corners keep a finite angle.
The 12x6 rectangular board can even be mapped analytically (locally angle-preserving) way by consider it the upper part of the plane of complex numbers, (with the singularity at 0), and square those numbers to make the grid fill the whole plane. This increases the size of the squares as one moves away from the singularity, though.
It is even possible to completely 'rectify' the board, by duplicating it and join it to a rotated version of itself. So that a 12x12 'four-player' board is created, with 2x2 areas cut away at the corners. The extra condition is that the position should always be point symmetric around the singularity. (So that the same player controls armies that start opposit to each other, and in each turn makes the mirrored move in both armies.) This is similar to representing a cyclindrical 8x8 board by a 16x8 board, requiring the right half is a replica of the left half, to get better visualization of what goes on at what would otherwise have been the wrapping edge.
This shows that the rule for diagonal moves through the singularity is really an irregularity (allowing the Bishop to change its shade): one would have expected the diagonal to continue into the mirror quadrant, and the move thus to effectively bounce back from the singularity. But instead it bounces off from the singularity at a 90-degree angle, onto the other main diagonal of the 12x12 board.