Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

MY SECOND COMMENT TODAY
'Thank you for your review, Jianying Ji.  The odd number of rows does seem to have an
effect on the infamous 'first move advantage' because the tempo can be reversed by
black as you noted.

The No Draws rule does apply to some of your concerns.  For example there is no
stale mate because the King is allowed to move into attacked squares, thus he loses.
 Some position where the game would take a very long time to resolve is unfortunate
and I am not sure how to resolve them immediately.  I may have to have a default
number of turns after which Black wins... but this could have unwanted side effects.
 

I will ponder.

Any ideas are welcome.  Thanks!'

That was a [2008-05-08] comment by John Lewis on the Simplified Chess Comments/Ratings page. It was followed by my comment referring to BLOCKADE STALEMATE positions. One day later you made the following preposterous comment (on that same page):

'I agree with Mr. Lewis. People should try to play this a few time before commenting. After doing that, then feel free to comment. If people are in need of an opponent to play, I have a zillions adaptation I can send them. If, after playing a few times, people have a few issues, I suggest people try Skirmish Chess on the 8x7 board. I will also put that into the Simplified Chess package. Also, I have Eurasian Pawn variants of all of the above, which is my preference for chess on an odd number of rows board'

I 'played' games of Shatranj in 2005 (POSTED) and FIDE Chess in 2008, both ending with the King (belonging to the player whose turn it was) stuck in a corner, surrounded by friendly pieces, which in turn are completely blocked by Pawns (friendly and unfriendly). Rich Hutnik and John Lewis continue to pretend that those games do not exist and ignore the lessons they teach. In the absence of any attempt to correct the false statements made here and elsewhere, this page does not deserve to be rated.

quoting Rich Hutnik's first three S.E.T.S. Rules:
'Here is how different conditions are scored:
1. A win by checkmate, or an opponent resigning, is worth 2 points.
2. Count barring the king (reducting their opponent to just their king) as
a 1 point victory.  However, if that player's king is also bared on the
very next move by their opponent, then the victory is worth only 1/2
point. When the situation of barring the king arises, the player has a
decision whether or not to take the 1 point upon their next move, if they
also don't have a barred king.  If they fail to take the barred king
victory, then this opportunity passes.  In this case, other scores can
come into being. 
3. Stalemate is worth 1 point to the player who causes their opponent to
being a position where they are stalemated.  In games where king capture
replaces checkmate, this rule is optional.  Games operating under basic
rules use king capture instead of checkmate.'

My [2005-03-08] comment on the Shatranj Comments/Ratings page presented a sequence of legal moves, ending in a position with no more legal moves (for the player whose turn it is). That constituted a COMPLETE game of Shatranj, which demonstrated that BLOCKADE STALEMATE can still happen in variants which allow king capture. Your statement that '... this rule is optional.' is completely mistaken and will encourage others to make more mistakes. See Simplified Chess, posted less than a month after this page, for an example.

And in games where both players have no pawns left on the board?  If Braves says as you state, it appears to me to turn chess in kinglet chess, where the objective is to capture all your opponent's board.  You could award people 1/8 of a point for each pawn they have left, when their opponent has no pawns left.  Kinglet chess win condition would actually be an interesting mutator to apply sometime.  Actually the variations on extinction chess where one or more pieces types are considered royal, is an interesting one.  In these games, I would suggest scoring = how many of those piece a player has left divided by number of those pieces on the board, as an interesting mutator. One could even integrate King capture, instead of checkmate, as one of these.

For people who have objections to SETS being 'too complicated' or has other issues, may I suggest:
1. It should only be used in tournament settings.
2. It could only be used when there is a dead draw to see who actually wins the game.  You could also take the sum of all draws, in event a multi-game match ends in a complete draw, and go with the player who scored the most.
3. I suggest people propose other weighting or explaining why the conditions I laid out should be dropped as not being valid?
4. What I describe is detailed, because these are all the potential draw conditions that are in chess currently.  Also, it looks to the original win conditions in Shatranj to get them also.  Again, I would ask people to not throw out the baby with the bathwater here, but propose tweaks or propose your own approach that is like this.  

I would also like to speak out to people who say, 'Well, if a game had just better rules for play, we would have less draws!'  Why shouldn't the chess variant community look towards draw conditions of a very draw-prone game, and effectively evaluate it?  If people don't want to do this (find it too complicated), then how about you have 3 judges that treat each game like a round, and they subjectively award points based on their experience for who won?  At the end of the multi-game match, the player with the most points wins.  Count a checkmate as 10 points and so on, or even 20.