Person Information

My two main hobbies are computer programming and Chess variants. Both date back to the early 1980's, when as an adolescent at the public library I discovered the Apple ][ and John Gollon's book Chess Variations. My interest in programming continued strong, because I kept getting more powerful computers, while my interest in Chess variants went dormant due to a lack of software and human players. My interest in Chess variants rebloomed in 1998 when I began finding programs that play different Chess variants. I soon discovered this site, and not long after Zillions-of-Games came out. This allowed me to merge my interests in computer programming and Chess variants. I am an INTP, the Myers-Briggs personality type dubbed the Architect. Computer programming has long been my medium of architecture, and with the aid of Zillions-of-Games, I became an architect of new games.

My involvement with this site began in 1999. Noticing that David Howe's email address was with my local phone company, I contacted him and asked if he was local. He was, and from then until I moved in 2002, we regularly met to play Chess variants together at a local cafe. These included our own games, games in design competitions, as well as Hostage Chess, Xiangqi, and Shogi. We even played Chess together once. The game we played most was Nightmare Chess. In 2001, in anticipation of moving away, I began working on PHP scripts to enable the playing of Chess variants online. Over time, this grew into Game Courier, another feat of architecture, which has become the best play-by-mail system for Chess variants on the web.

My Chess variants fall into two main periods. During my early period, my main tool was Zillions-of-Games, I routinely met David Howe to play Chess variants together, and I regularly entered design competitions. Some of my best games from this period include Grand Cavalier Chess, Clockwork Orange Chess, and Wormhole Chess. During my later period, I began programming games for Game Courier, played games mainly online, and eventually stopped bothering to enter design competitions. Some of my best games from this period include Kamikaze Mortal Shogi (created in online collaboration with Roberto Lavieri), Storm the Ivory Tower, and Eurasian Chess.

As an editor of this site, my responsibilities include the following:

• Main webmaster for the Play subdomain.
• Programs and debugs Game Courier
• Maintains the Recognized Chess Variants list and runs polls for expanding the list and for selecting recognized variants of the month.
• Maintains the Piececlopedia.

I rarely handle email sent to the main editors account, leaving this responsibility mainly to the other editors.

Short Bio.

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