Check out Glinski's Hexagonal Chess, our featured variant for May, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Aug 19, 2017 06:25 AM UTC:

Unfortunately the Interactive Diagram (or WinBoard) does not understand the (,) or [] notations. The 'a' modifier allows you to glue steps together, by using 'mp' for the mode of the preceding leg, which then would allow it both to move and to hop, so that it becomes completely insensitive to the occupation of the intermediate square. The 'a' system for multi-leg moves has the limitation that all steps have to belong to the same Betza atom, however. All leaps can be written as a sequence of King steps, but for long leaps this does get a bit cumbersome. Like mpafmpafmpafsW to write (1,4) as four King steps. For (1,5) two Zebra leaps could do it, and for (1,4) three Knight moves, but it is questionable whether this would give something that is easier to understand.

I am aware this is rather cumbersome, but I don't like the other two solutions much better. The [] notation to glue moves is just as kludgy. The coordinate notation is at least general, but I don't like to reserve parentheses for this. The cleanest would be if these leaps had their own capital. But unfortunately the iconic piece for (1,4) is the Giraffe, and Betza already used a 'G', seemingly without reason, for (3,3). Of course at some point you would run out of letters anyway. Leaps longer than 3 squares are so rare that it doesn't hurt too much if they can only be indicated in a cumbersome way. Note that for lame leaps it would be necessary to specify the entire path anyway, with 'm' rather than 'mp' modality for the non-final legs.

The simplicity of Betza notation often hinges on the choice of convenient defaults (like 'all directions' in absence of directional modifiers, 'mc' in absence of modal modifiers, step/infinite range in absence of a range specifier...). Perhaps the default modality of a non-final leg should be 'mp', then the (1,4) move would simplify to afafafsW, which reads somewhat easier. The corresponding lame move would then be mafmafmafsW. But in WinBoard I defined the default modality to be 'm', under the assumption that short-range lame leapers would be more common than very-long-range leapers.


Edit Form

Comment on the page Betza Notation

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.