Ratings & Comments
The book itself is very disorganized and tough to read, with many passages that are repetitive and uninteresting. However, enough of Bird's personality shines through that I am glad to have made his acquaintance. To correct what I said earlier about the time of his career -- it was from before the first tournament up to the times of Lasker.
Bird lost a match to Steinitz by a mrer 7 to 6. 'Bird is one of history's greatest non-GM chessplayers.' I said, but I was wrong. Steinitz was a tough cookie. Losing 7-6 makes Bird a GM in my estimation. More than superb, optimal!
More than excellent, superb! Harry Bird is one of history's greatest non-GM chessplayers. His originality combined with his longevity (he played against Morphy, and he played against Lasker, maybe even against Vidmar, if I remember rightly) combined with his strength (not a world champion, but surely stronger than me) make him one of the more interesting personalities in modern chess history. I have often heard of this book, but was never fortunate enough to find a copy. Now I can read it at last. More than superb, optimal!
I'd like to see this article expanded to include other types of ...er.. cursed pieces and cursed players. For example, how about Restless (or Hyperactive or Flying Dutchman) pieces that have to be moved each turn (e.g., the King in Triplets)? Or how about the Ruddigore Chess curse that requires a player to capture an enemy or discard a friend at each turn? (By the way, a similar curse is imposed on the players of Sudden Death Chess.) Perhaps you could also include Hesistant (or Hamlet?) pieces that require two or more turns to move (somewhat like Ralph Betza's Inchworms). Finally, how about Cuckoo pieces that can only capture friendly pieces? (Some species of cuckoo place their eggs in nests of birds of other species.)
Just as a note from the author: Ed's variant of doing queen attacks does work well, also. But don't get too trigger-happy- it's good defense. Make sure you don't get blindsided by a bishop in the classic variant! The major downside to the queen shot variant is that then you can't reasonably use a bishop to move in for the kill; you pretty much have to lose two pieces to the shotgun, unless you use knights well... -- Adam Norberg (sgamer [att] swbell [dott] net )
I would like to announce that I am going to be running an Omegachess tournament by email on Richard's Play By Email server at http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv In order to play in the tournament you must have a PBM userid. Check out http://www.gamerz.net/tutorial.html and http://www.gamerz.net/commands.html if you are new and want to sign up for a free userid and password on the server. You do not have to have ever played Omegachess before on the server to compete in this tournament. If you would like to play in the event please email me your PBM userid to DavidNYJfan@hotmail.com I have not yet decided exactly how I am going to structure the Omega tournament. It will probably be a round robin tournament, with between 4 to 8 games in the first round, and a certain number of players advancing to a second and final round. I would also like to announce that I am also going to run a chess tournament on PBM too. This is traditional orthodox chess! This tournament is open to the first 25 players who email me to enter. I will be creating five 5-man sections. Each player will play a total of 4 games, 2 as white and 2 as black, one game against each of the other players in the tournament. The 5 section winners will then advance to a final 5-man section for the championship of the tournament. In the event of a tie for first place in a section the first tiebreaker is head-to-head result. In the event of a draw or a 3-way tie where A beat B, B beat C and C beat A, all tied players advance to the finals and a larger final section will be created. Again, to compete in this tournament you must have a PBM userid. You may enter both tournaments if you like. When emailing me please make sure to specify which tournament you are entering. Thanks again and good luck!!
People should know that the excellent diagram that makes it so easy to visualize the chatter moves was added by the editor, not the author. The editor gets an 'excellent' rating for this page.
That was an excellent chatter response. Responsible usage of the rules tells us that a piece which takes only one step ends its move after that one step and therefore is not eligible to chatter. However, your idea sounds like a lot of fun! One can always arbitrarily restrict Kings and Pawns from participating in the fun; and I think this would be necessary, not only because it appears to be too difficult to chase down a King supported by multiple riders (note that 'a K supported by a Bishop' can only run towards the Bishop), but also because the offensive uses of Chattering Pawns would dominate the game, as they do in N-Relay II. Decimal Chatter Chess, on a 10x10 board, would become quite interesting if you had the Pawns on the third rank, all Riders on the first, and a second rank full of weak steppers -- the usual suspects, W, F, Crab, Barc, A, and D -- because the early play would be dominated by the weak pieces being thrown forwards by the power of the riders. You'd need to arrange your pieces very carefully, making room for the weak pieces to get past the Pawns, setting up intersecting lines for the riders, and putting the weakies where they could join in the fray but not get in the way. All the while trying to maintain a defense against the pesky foe.
The comment system allows you to see the whole discussion on one page, instead of needing to access (and then page down past all the garbage) a new page for each message. This is a huge advantage, and I expect that people will abandon the yahoo thingy and flock to the chessvariants.com comment pages.
I fall between Peter and David here. When I write a comment, I don't really plan it. Something in the page, or another comment sets me off, and I just start writing. If it leads somewhere not completely germaine to the page being commented on, so be it. BUT, the result is that discussions that are potentially interesting or inspiring get buried attached to pages that effectively conceal them from later browsers. (Look at the recent discussion attached to the 'Archoniclastic Chess' page.) To do the thing properly, comments should be limited to the variant they are attached to, and any flight of fancy should be moved to the discussion group. I think this is against human nature (at least mine) and I would probably never make 50% of those posts. Furthermore, the discussion group posting may be cryptic outside of context of the variant page that inspired it. On the other side, the number of people 'misusing' the comment system are relatively small. It would be a huge waste of time and resources to build a parallel discussion system for a handful of 'chatterers'. Also, the public discussion board has a better possibility of attracting random searchers. Maybe a compromise is possible. Let me note here that I am no programmer, and I have no idea how difficult any particular idea would be to implement. An idea that seems simple to me might be to allow the writer of an extended comment to select a small set of keywords ('Ruddigore', 'double-move') which the comment system could also search for. Better ideas?
By the way, if anyone were interested, the link to the World Camelot Federation website, where the rules of Grand Camelot are posted is: http://communities.msn.com/WORLDCAMELOTFEDERATION
Peter, I've recently been playing Grand Camelot in another venue. Grand Camelot is a four-player version of Parker Brothers Camelot game. (To the peanut gallery: Yes, I know it's not a chess variant; let me finish.) Grand Camelot has two unusual features for a four-player game: 1 - Partners sit side by side. Translating to this game, Red and Green would be partners against Yellow and Black. 2 - The turn sequence is a 'figure-8'. Translated to Chaturanga 4-84, that would be Red - Yellow - Green - Black (repeat) This small change works surprisingly well, and I've wondered if it would be as successful in a 4-player CV like this. I generally find 4-player abstract strategy board games annoying, but Grand Camelot is lots of fun and very exciting. Also, the comment about the ZRF being double-dummy brought an idea to mind. Has there been a CV (e.g. Bridge Chess or Whist Chess) where the players bid to achieve a certain outcome? The partner of the 'declarer' sits out, and the defenders play without communication. This might be a possible thing to design. One could even play a Feeback version with ones physician, attorney, and accountant.
So, given the amount of chatter about Chatter Chess and Ruddigore Chess and so on, do we need 'virtual' comment pages so we can discuss variants that haven't actually been posted? Then, going forward, the comments will be where they belong. I mean, who's going to think about looking for comments about Ruddigore Chess attached to the Archoniclastic Chess page? Also, to David, I like the little subtle link to the recent comments at the top of the What's New page, but I don't think in GMT. Maybe we could include the current time in GMT, or the time elapsed since the last comment, or something like that.
I have no idea whether or not it's really playable, but judging purely by the text, the number of ingredients in the recipes, and the quality and amount of spices, I would have to guess that this is a very fine piece of work. Applause.
The idea is, it's grid chess, but each grid rotates 1/4 turn after each move; and alternate grids rotate backwards -- e.g. a1 goes to a2, and c2 goes to c1.
I wrote the program that displays the board and lets 2 people play, more than once, in different languages. Long lost, of course, even if you could find compilers/interpreters for those languages.
Orbital Rotating Grid Chess is like Pinwheel Chess except that e4,e5,d4,d5 is one cell, (so far just as in Offset Grid Chess, but...) and the other squares in c4-f6 are another cell, and the remaining squares in b2-g7 another, and the remaining squares in a1-h8 (in other words, the 28 edge squares) are another cell. And they rotate in opposite directions. Chaos!
Knight's Tour Rotating Grid Chess, not the right name, but you take a Knight's tour, and each turn the pieces on a1 move to b3 and the pieces on c2 get transferred to a1, and so forth
And finally, Brownian Motion Chess, where the squares are randomly inserted into a linked list, unknown to the players, and each turn everything moves forward on the list one step.
All that was from just one of my densely-typed two page articles in N/A in early 1970s.
I have all the back issues, and some other stuff, packed in a box to send them away, but I never get around to doing it. So nag me.
Critique: Pinwheel could be played postal, which was the only mode back then, but you'd be crazy to try. Both pinwheel and Orbital should be playable (and even fun!) in a noncompetitive online situation.
Knight's Tour is just an over-the-top thingy all us CV designers like to do, and Brownian Motion is over-the-over-the-topmost.
--
gnohmon
If you think Ruddigore Chess seems playable, by all means test a bit more and write it up! You're the inventor. I just blathered away with a crude sketch of the rules and a crazy suggestion, you saw the possibilities and found the specific rule-set that makes it work -- in other words, you do all the hard work, it's your game. <P> You'll mention me, of course, but you know I would never have pursued the idea further...
Very nice game. It is highly playable. Very enjoyable. The double teams interact in a cooperative way. The board is interesting to play on, especially with the center squares which change your piece types. Although the game harkens back to Chaturanga, even the 4-player version of Chaturanga, and other 4-player games, there is a lot on ingenuity here. The idea of changing piece type in the center adds some of the ancient flavor too. The double team environment in-itself adds a new element in many ways. The rules are simple to grasp. Traditional chess moves are used, along with the ancient moves in the center. The center, of course, alludes to the traditional struggle in chess to capture the center. The game is very nice. By that I mean that it is graceful and evocative. Nice game. Try it!
Make your pages have a 'printer option!' That way I could take your data home with me and actually use it!! Also, put a 'home' buttin at the bottom of each page, it would make site navigation easier... Thanks, Daniel
Daniel, do you realize that the site icon in the upper left-hand corner takes you to the index page? I have visited regularly for years, so I have the 'What's new?' page bookmarked. --JCL
Speaking of different topologies, I could swear I once came across a variant where the position of a piece within a square had an effect on its state or capabilities, but I have, perhaps mercifully, forgotten everything about it that might enable me to track it down. --JCL
How about Syncretic CHess? Another way to think about Feebback Chess is to enfeeble the pieces when they are toward the back of the board (i.e. closer to their first rank). This could be done by laming or spaciousing (whatever, this is a concept, not a finished product). BUT, the pieces would regain their normal powers as they approached the far rank. AND, you could lift an idea from M-Chess, and give them different augmentors depending on what ranks they stand on, perhaps leftward augmentors on righthand columns, etc. THEN, you could make it Archoniclastic, augmenting pieces depending on what color square they stand on. AND THEN, you could apply this to Peter Aronson's Chess with Cyclical Armies! AND AFTER THAT, you could work on the hex version for three players!! ('Basingstoke, John') Ahh, yes. Basingstoke it is. --JCL
The very concept of Ruddigore Chess leads immediately to, 'What is the state of a bare King?' The mind boggles, at least my mind does. --JCL
By the way, Race Chess is kind of like Rollerball Chess, which was an entry into some contest or other, and is actually kind of neat. You realize that the regular annual contests would be much more boring if Hans were born on February 29? (Yes, I know. I pirated that idea.) --JCL
As long as we are flogging this theme, how about Gondoliers Chess (two Kings, and no one knows which is the real one), Buttercup Chess (exchange King with random Pawn at start of game), Sorcerer Chess (each piece is attracted to randomly chosen other piece), Lord High Executioner Chess (must mate self before opponent, too drawish), Lysistrata Chess (Queen refuses to perform, whoops, wrong playwright), and...and ('Basingstoke, John') Aah yes, Basingstoke it is. --JCL
'would perhaps come close to being almost nearly playable' Almost . . . Well, if instead of each rank and file being different, if the board were divided into maybe three zones in each dimension (left, center, right; back, center, forward; etc.), then this might be actually manageable by a normal human. And on the other topic, once youopen the door to Gilbert and Sullivan chess, logic dictates all sorts of generalizations (Aristophanes chess, Tolstoi chess, Rowling chess, ad...ad...I dunno) --JCL
Note that any CV whose rules are lost would serve as Thespis Chess. --JCL
We might also mention Realm Chess. I'm still trying to find Betza's Pinwheel Chess on our site, but so far have been unsuccessful. Perhaps we need to add it?
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