Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Might it be worth tracking here not only who has nominated/seconded games, but also eligibility status and perhaps even what currently makes a game ineligible if so?

I concur with this suggestion.

New month started.

Might it be worth tracking here not only who has nominated/seconded games, but also eligibility status and perhaps even what currently makes a game ineligible if so?

I have now done this up through Opulent Lemurian Shatranj, and to save time, only for the remaining games that are also seconded. Here's a legend of my codes:

GC

Programmed for Game Courier. Meets requirement for programmed online play.

OGC

Old Game Courier, meaning it is programmed for rule enforcement but does not support display of legal moves or evaluation of endgame conditions. Could use updating.

UGC

Unprogrammed Game Courier. Needs updating.

ID

Interactive Diagram. Too weak to meet requirement but may tip balance.

PG

Past games, linking to Game Courier logs. Meets requirement for record of past games.

J

Jocly. Too weak to meet requirement but may tip balance.

Li

LiChess. Programmed Online Play requirement?

Lu

Ludii. Too weak to meet requirement but may tip balance.

Z

Zillions-of-Games. Meets requirement for being able to play against your computer.

Of the seconded games I added details for, none fully qualify. Seireigi comes closest, being playable on Game Courier, on Jocly, on Ludii, and with an Interactive Diagram. While it is playable against multiple computer opponents, two are JavaScript based, the other is Java based, and all are fairly weak.

Since none of the seconded games currently qualify, I will nominate Alice Chess for this month, as I know it does meet all qualifications, and already has some popularity. With the exceptions of 2005 and 2014, new games have been started on Game Courier for every year from 2003.

Alice Chess sounds good (second from me)

Also I can add that some games were programmed for online play with both comp or human opponents on Lichess-based sites: Lishogi supports Kyoto Shogi (even against computer), Pychess (for whose devs playability against Fairy-Stockfish is primary condition to let new variant to be added) has Duck Chess (+- regular monthly tournaments) and Seirawan Chess (with House and 960 versions) which even has some popularity among players in lobby of that site.

Main point is that what you call Li should include more open source sites of this family, not only Lichess.

I contributed to many of them btw. And Pychess’ chat is the place where I first seen CVP link and then… it somehow changed my life.

Alice Chess is now the featured variant for June, 2024.

Pychess (for whose devs playability against Fairy-Stockfish is primary condition to let new variant to be added) has Duck Chess (+- regular monthly tournaments) and Seirawan Chess (with House and 960 versions) which even has some popularity among players in lobby of that site.

I decided I would compare PyChess to Zillions-of-Games by conducting some games of Chess between them. After figuring out that the time controls in PyChess were per game rather than per move, I set them to the maximum and had Zillions-of-Games play at 1 second per move. With PyChess set to level 1, Zillions-of-Games won. With PyChess at level 8, it defeated Zillions-of-Games. To find out the lowest level at which PyChess can defeat Zillions-of-Games, I next tried it at level 4, and it lost to Zillions-of-Games. So, I increased its level to 6, and PyChess defeated Zillions-of-Games. Then I decreased it to level 5, and it defeated Zillions-of-Games again. So, level 5 was the lowest level at which I got it to defeat Zillions-of-Games with 1 second thinking time.

I then raised the thinking time for Zillions-of-Games to 2 seconds, and because PyChess had changed sides on me, I let Zillions-of-Games play White. While the previous game was very long, Zillions-of-Games quickly defeated PyChess at level 5. I then raised the thinking time of Zillions to 5 seconds per move, and it still lost to level 8. Then I raised it to 10 seconds per move, and it still lost to level 8. Not only was PyChess level 8 defeating Zillions-of-Games at these longer thinking times, but it was taking less time to move too, which is another indication of how strong an opponent it can be. While I could go further in comparing them, I am currently satisfied that PyChess can play well enough for it to fulfill the computerized opponent requirement.

Main point is that what you call Li should include more open source sites of this family, not only Lichess.

We currently have a Lichess tag for games on the Lichess website, which it looks like you have tagged the most pages with, and I was checking for that tag on the page. We also have a PyChess tag. I am not very familiar with Lichess or PyChess myself, as I was already busy working on Game Courier before they existed. So I have to rely on people like you who know more about them than I do to let us know more about them.

PyChess is a web version of Fairy-Stockfish?

You can also play the latter directly under WinBoard, as a local program. It might be much stronger.

[Edit] I had a look at the PyChess FAQ, to get an idea of how that site works. It states that the "play against AI" functionality there uses a version of the Fairy-Stockfish engine that is running on the server. This means the thinking time of the engine has to be severely limited to not overload the server. The FAQ states that even on level 8 it is limited to less than 1 sec (one assumes using a single CPU thread). The time control that you can select (base time per game and increment per move) is just for the human player.

When you download and run Fairy-Stockfish on your own PC, you can have it think many seconds (or minutes or hours), using all CPU cores.

In normal Chess Fairy-Stockfish should be similar in strength to regular Stockfish. Which would be around 1500 Elo stronger than Zillions of Games (3400 Elo vs 1900 Elo on the CCRL scale). Since the rule of thumb is that doubling thinking time gains an engine some 70 Elo, you would have to make Zillions think a million times longer than Stockfish, to approach the latter in strength. Stockfish at 1msec/move should still easily beat Zillions at 10 sec/move.

The lower levels of the AI on the PyChess website are probably implemented by using Stockfish' UCI_LimitElo option in addition to reducing its thinking time. This option intentionally randomizes the evaluation, increasing the probability for the engine to play moves it would otherwise recognize as sub-optimal / blunders.

A small heads‐up that Knight‐Relay chess has in fact been nominated twice and filed under different names; it also has an actual page (albeit from the early days of the site, and featuring some now‐probably‐obsolete info about leading players) besides the Friedlander applet linked in both mentions.

Since the rule of thumb is that doubling thinking time gains an engine some 70 Elo, you would have to make Zillions think a million times longer than Stockfish, to approach the latter in strength.

I tried putting that to the test by having Zillions-of-Games play at 30 seconds per move and then at one minute per move, and it lost both times, which is just making PyChess look all the more impressive. I didn't go higher, because I wanted to keep the length of the game from exceeding the 90 minutes allowed for each player to move.

new month started

I'm seconding Spartan Chess!

We're lacking nominations and seconds for eligible games. Since Chess with Different Armies is eligible and has been favorited as much as Alice Chess, I'll nominate that.

How does Chak not qualify?

I'll add a nomination for Duke of Rutland's Chess

How does Chak not qualify?

While it has an interactive diagram and can be played at Pychess.org, it has no record of past games. If Pychess.org keeps records of past games, I haven't seen them. There is no record of past games on Game Courier, because Chak isn't on Game Courier.

Billy Bob vs Elias

They're humans.

@Fergus,

A new month has started.

I see you have started to put links to supporting sites. However, it is not super clear to me that these links are separate from the name of the game, so I might do some editing to make things a little more organized and easier to read.

My plan is to put the supporting links in square brackets to separate them from the name, and add a legend explaining what .

P.S. Under the current rules for featured variants, I'm not sure if Seireigi qualifies. It satisfies rules 1, 2, and 4 easily, but I'm on the fence for if a "fairly strong computer" clause in rule 3 is satisfied. It depends on whether you consider Jocly a fairly strong computer oppoenent (Ludii plays terribly, so no need to consider it).

My plan is to put the supporting links in square brackets to separate them from the name, and add a legend explaining what .

Okay, you could try that.

Under the current rules for featured variants, I'm not sure if Seireigi qualifies. It satisfies rules 1, 2, and 4 easily, but I'm on the fence for if a "fairly strong computer" clause in rule 3 is satisfied. It depends on whether you consider Jocly a fairly strong computer oppoenent (Ludii plays terribly, so no need to consider it).

I just played my first game of Seireigi against Jocly, and I beat it easily. It played very poorly, which is to be expected given that this is coded in JavaScript, and Shogi-like games are already more difficult for a computer program to play thanks to drops greatly increasing the moves to consider.

I have made Chess with Different Armies the featured variant for July, 2024. It was previously featured 20 years ago.

I know I get caught up in my own projects and don't remember to do the featured variant until the last minute or later. It would help to have more nominations of eligible games or for people to work on adding support for games that are not fully eligible yet. Let's start thinking about what we can do for next month now.

could you add Duke of Rutland's Chess to the nominations? That has to qualify I imagine

I just played my first game of Seireigi against Jocly, and I beat it easily. It played very poorly, which is to be expected given that this is coded in JavaScript, and Shogi-like games are already more difficult for a computer program to play thanks to drops greatly increasing the moves to consider.

I suppose this is why it plays such one-sided games of Chu Seireigi against itself...

Okay, you could try that.

I know I get caught up in my own projects and don't remember to do the featured variant until the last minute or later. It would help to have more nominations of eligible games or for people to work on adding support for games that are not fully eligible yet. Let's start thinking about what we can do for next month now.

We could make that last part easier, by having some sort of database and a script for adding featured variants. It's only an idea though, so I'll stick to editing the page in WinSCP.

[Edit] Added square brackets encapsulating supporting links.

Can't we present the nominations as a table, with columns that can be ticked for eeach of the facilities that exist for it? That would make it much easier to find one that (nearly) meets the requirements, and see what still has to be provided.

I suppose the information we list now is not completely up to date either; there exists an Interactive Diagram for Golem Chess (in the comments), and there might exist computer opponents that are far stronger than Zillions in cases where no Zillions implementation exists.

Especially nominations where the lack of a strong computer opponent is the only thing disqualifying them, this might be very easy to fix.

Can't we present the nominations as a table, with columns that can be ticked for eeach of the facilities that exist for it?

Yes, it would be much easier to read that way. [EDIT: I have begun working on this. I will prettify it after all the data is tabulated.]

I suppose the information we list now is not completely up to date either;

Yes, after a while, I focused only on games that were seconded.