Comments by catugo

I thought about this as a simple mutator (as you call it) on your initial idea of adding on a capablanca board minor pieces and as I'm uncomfortable with the modern elephant for being color bound I replaced it with the Spartan lieutenant. The waffle/phoenix and the frog seem like natural additions.

An difficulty I have with these ideas is that the frog's trebuchet jump may be a bit too much :)!

But then something HG once said to me in the context of discussions about apothecary chess 2 (correctly I think) is that you need more strong pieces to make the game a bit faster and more decisive. I'd propose, in order to make the exchanges more interesting to have pieces close to queen value. So I propose for the added major piece besides, the minor ones I've considered above: the Marshall (R+N), the Minister (B+N+W)- there are probably other names for this one- and the unicorn (B+NN)- the strongest of the three. For which is with which I though to pair the game with Spartan Lieutenants with the Marshals (in order to have a diagonal and orthogonal piece), the game with the waffle/phoenix with the Unicorn (as there the unicorn is the only strong piece proposed with no wazir move) and the frog game will have the Minister. But I would not add a new strong piece in the normal setup by expanding the capablanca board or pushing or deleting pawns. But through an alternative piece introduction method. This would be other gating (the piece sits behind a friendly piece and takes it's place when this one got moved), the Seiwaran way, or through bruhaha squares. Out of those here I'd prefer gating as the Seiwaran way leads to sometimes game-breaking tactics and the Bruhaha way is to fixed. Gating would alleviate a bit of the first move advantage as black would be able to create his strategy already knowing where the white gated piece goes.

Next are some diagrams illustrating what I think maybe it's good to be considered:

Thinking about the initial setups was not trivial and quite fun so I'm glad the best turned to be different. I chose reasonable gating options to be displayed by both players.

And the most important thing, although I think Kevin you are not quite comfortable with this one. But I'm putting it out there for discursion.  I almost always though that practical promotion only to queen is maybe not such a good idea. So I think I/we should consider 7th rank promotion to lesser pieces.  The question here is "to rook or not to rook"!... Well, if we allow promotion to rook than most promotion will be rook as basically you will never promote at 7th rank to non-rook and it really rare to promote to the stronger pieces as an extra rook (almost, you do lose your promoting pawn after all)  usually wins you the game among serious players. The second alternative is to promote to any of the 3 minor pieces but not rook. That is quite good actually as the 3 minor pieces are close in value and there are plenty of opportunities to promote the the slightly weaker ones. But then there will be no promotion to rook, and personally I don't like that just for it and besides now KP vs K is again not necessarily a win as it would be when being able to promote to a rook on the 7th rank. So I had cooked a third longer but I'm thinking better rule.

A player can promote a pawn to a rook on the 7th rank if at least one of the two following cases occurs

1. The next two conditions are both simultaneously true:

  i). This player has already promoted another pawn regardless of to which it had promoted it

  ii). This player has at least double the number of all minor pieces to the number of rooks

2. The player is down to it's last pawn

Kevin besides maybe other concerns I think you are thinking that this rule is to complex for new players. But I don't think this is a big issue as player will come in contact with this rule later anyway, after getting the basic differences. But I do think that it makes the game have more options :), and that tends to be good :)!

Hi Kevin!

This game would also work with spartan elephants I think. Isn't it?

You have made a game with frog + spartan elephants, but would they just work in this one replacing each the waffle/phoenix? 3 games. And if you want 12x8 also you may choose 3 groups of 2 :)!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wFQPSEPgWc&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2LYMJcOnnWGPuNDp03EOvKjtxy7DeLBg2UcNKtyxC-sBVULLOs52wl1Sk

As I had said before your are perfectly correct.

It is hard for me to find the comments in quenstion, but I'll try :)!

Why can't I edit my own personal information? It says I have to be an editor.

I think I had asked that before, but I don't remember where nor I remember the answer :(!

Is there a way to control from the GC program the content of the  caputred pieces box? Or the system just collects all pieces that have dissapeared. I ask that because for example in a centennial chess game I play against Anthony he has moved and reoriented his spearman and now his spearman (in straight orientation) appears captured although it is not the case :(!

You mean something like open office?

@Fergus

I'm not confident enough to be sure about this, so I'm asking:

Is the following code fine for verifying if a piece that can perform moves only as and alfil and ThreeLeaper (or Trebuchet as is also called) but can both move and capture as a regular knight ?

checkleap #0 #1 3 0 and nor capture nor empty #0 empty #1 or checkleap #0 #1 2 2 and nor capture nor empty #0 empty #1 or checkleap  #0 #1 2 1;

As a sorce of inspiration I had used your anglican bishop code in Caissa Britania :)!

Thanks!...

ChessV plays many Capablanca variants but technically not Capablanca Random :(!

May I ask why?

Or maybe, Halloween ghosts are on :)! Wooohuuuooo!

@Fergus,

Hey,

It seems I screwed up something

In the Apothecary1working  settings file I have forgot to put the "//" indicating comments. So an error happened. When saving (in ignorance to the above mentioned fact) something wrong got saved and now I cannot reload without the error to come to the forefront. I guess I should have preset test before saving :(!

Please help when you can!...

Regards!...

I had also decided to scrape the extra initial moves of the pieces starting on the bruhaha squares.

In his initial game of Bruhaha Greg Strong has done this in order to have extra opening possibilities.

But in these games it is not that needed. Only the champions has to suffer as he cannot jump to the 3rd rank during his first move. So maybe he will be moved twice in the opening :)!

Hello again folks,

While reading Fergus's "How to enforce rules in game courier"  I rethought the idea of castling (which did not exist until now) in the 2 apothecary games. Even if the game starts with connected rook,s tucking the king to more safety while plunging the rooks into action seems a good extra choice. And I figured as the board is wider I could allow more options, and giving the fact that moving the king closer to the edge is usually more desirable I decided for two sub options in the closer to the middle castles. A specific choice of castling will be available only if the king path to it's destination will be unobstructed, the rook's path to it's destination is unobstructed by anything else than the king and both the rook to be moved and the king have not been yet moved; also the king needs not to cross a checked square in it's path :)!

The king's path is given by a diagonal step back towards the rook and the horizontal steps until destination.

The six castling options are:

1. King side long castle: The king moves (for white) through g1&h1 and lands on i1. The king side rook then jumps on h1.

2. Opposite side long castle: The king moves (for white) through e1&d1 and lands on c1. The king side rook then jumps on d1.

3. King side short castle: The king moves (for white) through g1 and lands on h1. The king side rook then jumps on g1.

4. Opposite side short castle: The king moves (for white) through e1 and lands on d1. The king side rook then jumps on e1.

5. King side short spread castle: The king moves (for white) through g1 and lands on h1. The king side rook then jumps on f1.

6. Opposite side short spread castle: The king moves (for white) through e1 and lands on d1. The king side rook then jumps on f1.

To my understanding archers are meaningless inside the trojan horse besides the fact that they can be dropped :)!

@Fergus

Ok, Got it!...

Sorry for the trouble :)!

@Fergus

Ok, Got it!...

Sorry for the trouble :)!

I did save it the way you suggested. The way it was was obviously wrong. The problem is still in the set instruction as far as I can see :(!

Yes, this was one of my later atempts, it does not work without the paratheses :)!

Ok, here are the 2 apothecaries:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Apothecary+Chess+1&settings=Apothecary1working

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Apothecary+Chess+2&settings=Apothecary2working

They are mostly the same, so there is one or the other.

Please ignore the move forcing attemps. For now just the initial position matters. A long time ago I wanted to move forward. I still do. But the initial position still has errors and that should be taken care of first.

Unfortunately I seem to still get the behavior I got two years ago, meaning the second part (the else part) of the code always executes in the two if statements conditioned by the coin1 and coin2 variables. I had tried to use rand 1 2 instead of rand 0 1  and set (rand 0 1) meaning adding parentheses. None of these work. They were desperate attempts anyway .

Hello everybody!

Once again I need some help with the game courier programming.

I am attempting once again to write rule enforcing presets for my 2 apothecary games.

In my first presets, which I use as basis for development, I had written a short code meant to choose out of the 24 legal initial positions.

Next there is an explanation about what the code is supposed to do.

As I have written in my article apothecary 1&2 have 24 initial possible position which can be chosen by 2 throws of coins and a throw of dice. The first coin throw would decide the placement of the major pieces. If it is centralized (on the d,e&g files) this should be 1 otherwise (on the b,e&i files) it should be 0. The dice throw then decides which of the 6 permutations of pieces occupy the 3 designated fields on the files decided by the first coin (they occupy the 2nd rank for white and the 9th rank for black). The second coin should decide if the bishops occupy the remaining files closer to the king (bishops in) when the coin is 1 or  closer to the edge (bishops out). Take note that the fields on the a and j files (ahead of the rooks) are empty.

In order to achieve  that I had used the following code for apothecary 1 (for 2 there is just a piece naming difference so far):

empty b2 c2 d2 e2 g2 h2 i2 b9 c9 d9 e9 g9 h9 i9
set coin1 rand 0 1;
set coin2 rand 0 1;
if == coin2 0:
drop Q any b2 e2 i2;
drop A any b2 e2 i2;
drop G any b2 e2 i2;
copy b2 b9;
copy e2 e9;
copy i2 i9;
flip b9 e9 i9;
else:
drop Q any d2 e2 g2;
drop A any d2 e2 g2;
drop G any d2 e2 g2;
copy d2 d9;
copy e2 e9;
copy g2 g9;
flip d9 e9 g9;
endif;

if == coin1 0:
drop N last b2 c2 d2;
drop N first g2 h2 i2;
drop n last b9 c9 d9;
drop n first g9 h9 i9;
drop B last b2 c2 d2;
drop B first g2 h2 i2;
drop b last b9 c9 d9;
drop b first g9 h9 i9;
else:
drop B last b2 c2 d2;
drop B first g2 h2 i2;
drop b last b9 c9 d9;
drop b first g9 h9 i9;
drop N last b2 c2 d2;
drop N first g2 h2 i2;
drop n last b9 c9 d9;
drop n first g9 h9 i9;
endif;

My questions are:

1. How do I know that the preset sets a new random seed, if it does, as I do not seem to find any mention on that in the developer guide besides the constants chapter (by the way the link to fisher random chess from the developer's guide seems to be wrong although I could find the game through game courier->games to play-> the letter F->...)?

2. How would I test that the distribution among the 24 position is constant? The play button (playing with myself) yields the same results always?

Thanks!

@Greg,

First, I'm on the tip of my toes about your next trial with conditions adapted to HG's observation.

"Again, I don't think changing BD to BnD changes the flavor or removes any spice.  Do you?  "

I have a bit of discomfort as the game did not had any lame leapers before but that borders on nothing. I'm more concerned how the change affect the balance against the two other armies. As this seems to me that will lead to a wave of interconnected changes that are probably not easy to pull through. Some sort of logical system of equations needs maintaining and I honestly doubt such and endevour is even doable, little to say about feasible. This because you don't have many options for tunning while keeping the initial flavour on

But I'm very much for any CWDA game. It is just that a sequel to Betza's game should borrow off his elements otherwise it is another chess with different armies game. A better one quite likelly.

"On this we must disagree[about the game not needing rescuing].  Sure, it is playable.  It is one of the most popular games on Game Courier so certainly people can play it and have fun.  But if the armies are way out of balance, as it has become clear that they are, then it fails at its stated goal.  If the game were played and studied even more as time goes on, people would learn exactly how to exploit the unbalance and the game would no longer be playable. "

The game is good enough at my level. It is probably good enough at any current human level (although this could be a stretch) but there is always the quest for even better (I am an engineer after all). And the endeavor of making another game sequel or not is great. I'd venture the idea we may need to make a distinction about it, but if we don't make it other future people will surely do, if it's the case, so much bothering could not be needed here either.

What I was actually insisting about it was that maybe my musketeer technique is and easier goal to achieve without sacrificing any design principles(besides making the board more crowded which is something I actually like, even if 36 pieces on an 8x8 tends to be too much even for me). But we can easily go on our merry way if this back and forth can't advance in an useful way and maybe History will decide. Or not, as currently chess variants don't seem to catch on! The space of possible chess variants is so vast that there is more than enough room for all of us. I remember you actually agreeing to help, so that is cool. So it is a math debate actually: the way I like it :)!

@HG,

In CWDA army tunning is most definetly a thing for any AI, epeacially in the context of flavor I was discussing with Greg earlier. In machine learning that should come rather easy but unfortuneatly I have not god that far. In the end the army is just another variable (be it some multidimensional properties). What I mean is that it should not be more difficult than any other desing of such algorithms.

@Greg,

We can very much leave Betza's game as is and invent a improved version ourselves. There is nothing wrong with that. And balance is the primary goal but to me the flavor is what bring the spice :)!

" If you want to make such a game, I would encourage it and I would try to help if you wanted, but I don't see this as a valid approach to rescuing CwDA. "

I don't say CWDA needs rescuing it is a good game. But I also see it as a good lesson, we could use.  The musketeer chess approach is meant to offer a way to balance the imbalances in a specific way to each match, because yes it is about armies and not the individual pieces but there is that old libertarian saying that society is made out of individuals which I think goes well here. A pair of minors or a rooklike and a bishoplike piece would at least open more doors which is hardly done otherwise, as far as I can see!

I thought a bit about Greg's proposal of weakening the charging rook (and his earlier proposal of weakening the Bede). I personally see big flaws with such a approach as the state space of the problem has at least 4 dimensions (16 if you consider playing white or black different things).  There could be a solution but first remember the the state space of the possible solutions is linked to the choosing of the pieces out of a small possible set, is it is probably non-neglijable likely to plainly not be able to succeed as the demands ar pretty tight. My proposal for getting out of the impasse is to combine the CWDA with musketeer chess. But instead of offering many options we may give a set of gating pieces for each of the 16 encounters (let's include FFvsFF here as they could receive slightly different pieces in order to compensate for playing white.). They can be just one piece of a general value of approximately 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or maybe pairs of the same or different pieces. Pairs of approximately 2.5 pieces seems quite interesting to me, as 2 of them worth exactly a rook and for one of them you may capture a regular minor and give up some positional or capture 2 pawns and earn some minor positional bonus.

For example in the FFvsFF encounter which in regular Betza is banned I think white should be able to gate two ffbbNsD and black should be able to gate two ffNsDbbLbH. Maybe the second piece is actaully worse but at first glance more jumping retreats should be better, be them longer. They also add to versatility especially in the endgame. Such pieces should worth around 6.5/8 knights=0.8125 knights=0.8125*3.25 pawns=2.640625 pawns=2.65 pawns, so pretty good.

Another reason Betza's implied (and indeed not stated) principle of armies with different styles should be preserved. The gating piece would probably be counter style, though in order to compensate for the misshapen of that particular matchup.

Greg,to be honest,i'm not sure if we should plunge ourselves into piece change judgemets. It is, most likelly, more complex than just this experiment. Also the game needs to be fun. My take from cwda is not about balance but aboutsomething i'd call "dinamic balance" as each army seems to "mean" something. I'm preparing a small experiment on this, also!... And maybe a more interesting rook could be along the lines of fsR4bWbB2

Actually to me there are a lot of bonus points if the ideas work well together. That is actually the main goal :)! So I'm totally on board with your first three paragraphs :)! My main goal in asking you this question Anthony was to understand something I don't but it seems you do!

After reading your whole argument Anthony I see your points. Thanks! That it was what it was all about :)! You have explained quite well. Thanks!... As my games are called apothecary maybe someday I'll put in some apothecary variants!...

For how many pieces is it feasible? Like for CWDA is K+Woody rook+short rook vs K +waffle (WA) doable?

To be honest I do not see the appeal of this game although people seem to applaud it latelly. It is not that the basic passable obstacle with an effort idea is bad , but there is not enough material to make a strategic game as far as I can see. May someone make in effort to describe his/her's appeal to this game?

I think the NN despite their many weaknesses they have a wonderfull middle game. That should probably always do it!

@Greg The Bede thingie seems a good idea for me and it does sound more natural for a rook!

About the RR, I find the FDH quite akward and it sould be around rook level. It probably is not (but the R4 definetly compensates for it).

Anyway very nice effort on mister Betza part in an era when computers were much weaker :)!

By NN I meant Nutty Nights. Sorry for the confusion. And I was not thinking about this. By definition the charging knight is a major piece. So is the charging rook, that should be obvious, and along with the colonel this means 3 major pieces. Although the colonel is probably weaker than the ordinary king or than the marshal!

The way I see it and I remember you commenting about this on wikipedia, HG (and us having this discussion a while ago) the order of the armies is NN>CC>FF>RR. But they are close. I like this game for the diversity though. In a private talk Vitya Markov has said that he think the RR are the stronger. I had never made this experiments, though.

Nice data HG!

My trouble is that I was already considering the NN overpowered :(!

I have seen a game of CWDA where K& Charging Knight has managed to checkmate a lone king. I was first not expecting this but it now seems normal especially if the attacking pieces are "above" the defending king. I'm not sure if it works otherwise. Anyone else knows anything else on that?

If your promote to a, after 1...ab8-d7 you can easily have 2.a c8-b7 with check and afterwards capture the enemy archbishop with your other one and then your are out of the woods :)!

@Fergus,

In the era of computer chess promoting to captured pieces does not seem that relevant anymore. Your Gross chess idea on promotion is great. I had saw it once, but forgot the game and author and somehat use it in apothecary (the promoting to different things part not the captured pieces part). In the meantime I had read it again.

And being at the topic of promotion, I'd like to bring a discussion from this topic on. In CWDA I'm quite uncounfortable with pawns promoting to pieces from both starting armies (where the case). That is because well then the armies are less "different". The reason given by Betza is very sound. The pawns are then different and that difference should be accounted for. True. But for future CWDA if they are on larger boards (normally with more pieces) there is more room to optimize so different promotions for pawns would not be an issue !

I am encouraging promotion to weaker pieces on earlier ranks (technically not underpromotion I guess) but I am not sure why this principle does not catch steam :)! To me it seems extra choice and that is always good provided there are not clear inconviniences. And I see none :)!

@HG,

By the way, technically the Chu shogi lyon has a knight move, even a enhanced one actually. But anyway the hippogonal pieces are are very basic thing to need to compensate for :)!

@Fergus

&the rest

I agree that the knight move is complemtenting both the diagonal and orthogonal move. But I like to point out something once Betza has said that it is very helpfull coincidence that the very different knight and bishop are so close in value on an 8x8 board. That is in a way arbitrary (in the way in the usual math pi is 3,.14... maybe someone with better philosophy background could explaid that sort of arbitrariness better) but the emerging properties of that are quite nice as now more diverse endgames are possible.

HG,

I'm not exactly sure what can't be the point of the discussion. Is that the fact the several nextchesses could happen. That was the point I'm making to couter-balance the idea of a dominat "next variant" which used to be at least pretty popular on this website. Indeed to me it is obvious that there is not just one "good" solution but several. But it is probably not obvious for everybody :)!

Anyway even if pieces like knights (and most other stuff maybe) are not necessities, anyone ca easily argue that combining styles could bring new interesting concepts, higher truths if I may. Sure new way of getting into trouble when designing are to be taken care of, but in opposition to most people I think more is better for the forgeable future (I don't mean 32x32 games, I mean feasible more).

I think chess popularity had an accidental side to it. It so happened that a good game had not an equal competitor and a snowball effect took place. But the interesting part if why is a good game. This discussion is overly done so no point into getting here again. But waht about the future? This was my point. I guess I did not get it across nicely :)!

I totally agree with Fergus there, I actually had this concept in mind but unfortunately did not bother with finding the quote so thanks. But that does not preclude the possibility (I obviously cannot speak for Fergus but I'm as sure as I can be that he would agree with me) that this could very well be a problem with several solutions. i mean there are sheep, cows and goats. They are all fine herbivores. And most likely it is by the laws of big numbers .

Also even more, Fergus mentioned (I don't recall the literal way) while recommending Gross Chess that there is room for niche variants, meaning people who like crazier (but definitely not inconsistent things) variant using joker or weird board topologies or who knows what?

About the forum link, I had not read each line but I get the point and you are correct. It is well done. Actaully Betza's articles (some touching exactly on this) were my entry point on this website :)!

Hello again,

it seems quite odd to me that not many care about this topic, as it used to be a  leading one on this website and I think with good reason.

In strengthening of my previous post here is an essay (although is titled research article the content does not seem to make it such a thing) of Daniel's Denett. It purpose os to raise a concern about meaningless philosophical endeavor. I think this heavily applies to chess variant design and as it goes a chess variant is the example in the article.

This is to say that we should aim for those variants that bring new meaning, not just crazy for the sake of crazy but consistently "good" as out of their "first principles" interesting higher truths emerge.

Thanks for your comments Kevin!

Hi Kevin,

I am not that sure that your perceived failure of an nextchess idea is totally justified.

Your argument about the grandfather-grandson game is definitely correct. More over as you have said before (in different words I cannot recall exactly), it is difficult to make a game as perfectly done as the "Mad Queen" variant ended up being :)! This is why I had argued for (may I shall now name it) the many nextchess hypothesis. Together they may prove to become even more popular then it's predecessors, but separately indeed one game will never be as dominant. That makes sense mostly because of the different paths next chess can take. Let's think about 10x10 games which seem the most convenient. I'd vote for Grand Chess, Omega Chess, Eurasian Chess and Shako although I have some quarrels with the first 2 (and technically omega chess in not exactly an 10x10 game). Each has it's beauty although I won't go into details here. Further even, Gross Chess offers a melding of them. A very well made game. Another path is Chess with different armies. Betza's one is definitely the most popular one but certainly Spartan chess deserves it fair share of respect. For multi move or at least interesting 8x8 ideas (again technically not 8x8), I really want to mention 8 stones chess. Musketeer chess has it's merits also, although I'm not that happy with the execution. Maybe just an 9x8 board would be an improvement as to me the game seems way to crowded. The pieces are quite creatively done. Although no griffin?!.. Come on :(! There are also drop games in the shogi family. Pocked shogi copper seems quite promising, and here maybe is fair to mention chu shogi with it's special Lyon piece (and oh boy,oh boy that tenjiku stuff). Xianqi offer special  things with it's confined king and weaker armies and the more rarely used hopper pieces. I think this fills everybody's hands with next chess opportunities. And in closing I'd like to add my (I'd like to say humble but I'm actually quite proud of them) apothecary games. I have designed them (in the conditions where Grand, Gross, etc. already exist) to add some cream to the cake by adding weird pieces like the joker, special promotion moves, stronger knights, bruhaha squares with different opening powers, and even alternative endgame conditions. I'd like here to express my concern than nobody noticed my proposed modification to the 2 apothecaries :(! (check the last 3 comments- the last one is actually me turning a bit too hippie ) : https://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?itemid=171817414be164e8&order=DESC .

And now let's get to serious business. But first le me explain something in order to go further. Bear with me please.

First I will refrain from using words like chaotic, random and deterministic as they do hold specific meaning for the more mathematically aware, the pop culture tends to toy with their normal usage. They way I see things at least, knowledge acquiring has two extremes. The first is the tumultuous trial and error with learning from big data, creativity and maybe even a touch of madness found most in  peak science (the last one and a half decade even more) or in the natural evolution of life. The second is the steady, safe, consistent, orderly and reductionist way of the engineers. Meaning principles are fine, but how do we automate things to get things going. And I insist on automate. Chess is very much towards the second type. I'm sure many would disagree but remember what type of game chess actually is mathematically speaking.

So why this sudden philosophy burst?

Mostly because I do not think we should look for nextchess in the past  tradition but in the holdings of the future. As I have insisted earlier on the word automate. I want to argue for the fact that chess was always meant for computers, just that at the time of it's and it's predecessor birth there were no such things (in a practical 20th century way at least). Still of course there were people who found pleasure in such findings starting roughly in early middle ages (although the Western historical timeline does not have fully explanatory power I'll stick to this approximation). But then chess and it's relatives became increasingly mechanistic in a accelerated manner in the 20th century. So, the point here is that chess is a celebration of thoroughness and that is the context where we should start our search. But, what is chess in a general way? Hard to say exactly but I'll venture a description with a flavor of definition. Chess has the attributes of being a game of usually perfect information, usually without random elements (and for know I will insist on these usual cases), where pieces with different attributes interact on the discrete and finite board (again usually but the exceptions to these are rare). A more narrower definition could impose the regular winning condition, among other things. This description leaves enough room for what if scenarios so that we will put our lab coats, make "fun" variants, and design AI's that play them well.That to see what happens and in the process bring a new level over the type 1 way of acquiring knowledge. These are the nextchess(s). And dear colleagues the show must go on!

A small addition regarding the AI vs human challenges of the last few decades comes next. Looking in hindsight, it seems that the initial ones were designed to see how good chess engines of the time were. There were no better challenges for AIs than the best humans. Now AIs have each other for that (check TCEC). In time human vs AI became just a exercise of blunder checking for the human candidate as seen in the recent MVL-Komodo challenge I've mentioned a few days ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exgVvSauvhQ). So today is just engines. In time, when people will become androids, or who knows what, we will probably have individuals (for lack of a better term I'll use the popular transhumans) that will choose such a "career". But for know we should accept that and invent chess variants accordingly.

Lastly I'd tackle the popularity issue. People worry a bit about machine on machine challenge not being popular, but TCEC does decently and that is not even a game designed with the new ways in mind. And the next human generation will obviously have a totally different outlook on life (some of your are probably parents and know better). So, never say never.

Thanks for reading so far, I appreciate it.

And I closing please if you'd like to continue the discussion please touch on the following issues:

1. Is the many nextchess hypothesis reasonable?

2. Should we try to promote successful (be it at our small scale) variants?

3. Is the chess is for Automation/analyses hypotheses for what chess means and is best for pinpointing viable?

4. Should we invest time in AI contests?

5. (I have not actually tackled that yet) How should we encourage spectators for chess variants in TCEC like events (understanding that the first step is that spectators should have a good knowledge not just on the rules but also on the strategy and tactics of the game).

- please find the time to take a look on my latest apothecary changes :)!

HG,

How have you build and implemented the AI in peace chess?

Chess V plays some of them including one of mine but you should realize (I think you had punily intended to hint you are yourself a programmer) that is not an easy task to take as such a general AI is rather hard to build. But maybe we should try.

You may download ChessV here : http://www.chessv.org/

Good luck !

Moreover, I want to try to implement these games which now seem better to me into ChessV2 (where 10x10 games look nicer and games are generality easier to implement).

There I want mostly to attempt to evaluate the piece values, using the HG Muller method.

This will be especially tricky with the joker does not have a fixed value as I discussed a while ago here mostly with Greg but depends heavily on the opponents material :)!

Then I'll try to automate the presets and change the 2 articles accordingly :)!

I hope this time laziness won't get the best of me :)!