Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

To the user who asked why castling is not allowed:
Castling is allowed on ICC (www.chessclub.com), but I don't know about
anywhere else.  This page should at least say that castling is sometimes
allowed.

The editors received the following correspondence from Doron Singer:

Your example claims Bxc1 wins. It, in fact, loses, which goes to show
suicide chess is deeper than what most people give it credit for.
Black's win is as follows:
1. Bxc1 g5
2. Bxg5 a6
3. Bxe7 axb5
now:
4. Bxf8 Nc6
5. Bxb5 Nd7
6. Bxd7 Ra3
7. Bxa3 b4
8. Bxb4
0-1

or:
5. Bxc5 Ra3

if:
6. Bxf8 Nd7 and so on
and if:
6. Bxa3 Nc6 and so on.

Doron.

• International rules: Specify that stalemated player wins. (Condition of no pieces remaining is not necessary because having 0 pieces already means no moves available)
• AISE rules: Specify player with 0 pieces remaining wins (stalemate is draw by default).
• FICS rules: The count-condition in Zillions can only specify whoever has more pieces wins, not loses. So, what you can do, is specify that each player moves his opponent's pieces: (turn-order (White Black) (Black White))
• Ebenfelt's variant: Turn off stalemate checking. Set option 'pass turn' forced.

Suicide Chess Solution for E2E4 open move is incomplete!

If knight does not move B1C3, but white player makes move with other piece
there is a big chance White wins : ) (G2-G3 Pawn for example seems like
move which ruins the whole solution)

Please if someone knows where I can find the whole solution write to pnk at
abv dot bg. Thank U

I would like to invite everyone to try my free "Suicide Chess" aplication
at http://suicidechessgame.webs.com/ 

Please if you have comments or recommendations share them.

Thank you for your time

Free Giveaway Chess ("Suicide chess") Windows Pnone App at:
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/suicide-chess-free/b89dc1a3-2d23-410d-b580-aaaff54d81f5
I will be very happy if you like it !!!

This was the first chess variant I'd ever heard of, way back in elementary school around 1970. After trying it a few times I disliked a game that would rely heavily on giving away stuff to the opponent in order to win. Looking at the variant's webpage nowadays, I can see this variant has depth, in spite of my still not liking it much as far as the thought of playing it myself. The extensive opening theory that apparently one needs to know to survive (in any sense) against strong losing chess players looks daunting, and I'm a bit disappointed that the traditional and obvious chess centre pawn moves 1.e4 and 1.d4 are thought to lose for White in this variant. So, not my cup of tea (at least at present) but I can see how this variant and its basic concept might attract many other people to it.

@H.G.,

In another comment you said "Actually it is Suicide/Giveaway that has no checking. In Losing Chess the checking rule does apply, and you lose by checkmating or baring the opponent."  This page is titled Losing Chess but says that other names are equivalent: Suicide Chess, Giveaway Chess, Killer Chess or Take-all Chess.  (The filename of the HTML page is giveaway.html)

According to this page, there is no check/checkmate but the rules for stalemate vary.  According to the Wikipedia page for Losing Chess, the "main variant" also has no royal king and a pawn may be promoted to a king.  But it also lists variant #3 with a royal king, which is also mentioned as a variant in Pritchard.

The page for the XBoard chess engine communication protocol lists:

So, I guess we had a number of variants that were collectively known under a variety of names, and someone gave specific names to the specific variants?  Which is a logical thing to do.  This page should probably be updated, but it would be good to know more about how this happened.

OK, I was not entirely correct. The variant that I referred to was called Losers Chess, not Losing Chess. Losers Chess is a variant played on ICC (chessclub.com), and perhaps also FICS (freechess.org), and supported by WinBoard, which acts as a client to these Internet Chess Servers. Rumor has it that it started as a failed attempt to implement Suicide, which would explain why there are no references to it outside these ICS. Some ofther variants on FICS/ICC seem not so much designed as well having accidentally occurred when someone did something strange on the server, e.g. TwoKings.

So there isn't really any contradiction. I just wanted to point out that a variant having both mandatory capture and the checking rule does exist.

BTW, I nowadays also often encounter the term Anti-Chess. Perhasp Suicide is called that way on LiChess or chess.com.

I just wanted to point out that a variant having both mandatory capture and the checking rule does exist.

Indeed it does.  So this is another use for IllegalUnlessOnly (I'd like to think of a better name for that. IllegalUnlessExclusive maybe?)

For positional evaluation in this game, is everything basically negative?  My frist thought was to make the material values of the pieces negative.  But it's also bad to have one's pieces in the center, so the PSTs are basically negative also.  And maybe everything ... having your rook on an open file is bad.  A knight outpost is bad.  Is "good" pawn structure also bad?  On that, I'm not sure.

And if everything is reversed, maybe just invert the eval after everything? (assuming it's not a mate score, -INFINITY is still -INFINITY).  Just thinking out loud.  And I don't currently have a "hook" in place for adjusting the whole eval after calculation but I could easily add one.  The whole "losing genre" jenre is one I would like to support...

I have never built an engine for such variants, and hardly ever played them myself. But strategy is much more subtle than you might think. From other engines (like Sjeng) I know that piece values are different from Chess, but positive. E.g. a Queen is worth about 6 Pawns. To win you must get a controlling advantage, so that you can force the opponent to take your weak pieces, which otherwise are difficult to get rid of. E.g. when white has all pieces in the FIDE start position, and black only his King and Pawns, white very easily wins.

Ok, thanks. I was not aware of Sjeng. Open source too!