Comments by joejoyce

The best of luck with this.

I listed you as a contributor. You should now be able to submit variants
with no more than the usual amount of trouble. ;) Enjoy!

Thank you, Tony, for the comment and the rating. Sorry I didn't notice it when you posted it. You were partly responsible for my interest in shatranj variants, way back when. The games were fun to do and I got to "meet" Christian Freeling in the process.

Fwiw, being very bad with awkward pieces, like the half-duck (HFD), and being terrified of relatively cheap but unblockable pieces capable of attacking several pieces at once, like the squirrel (NAD), I tried to design simple, obvious pieces that were easy to use and to understand. I didn't want them too powerful, but they needed to be much more capable than the original piece mix. It's nice to see some of my games being played. Thanks.

http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/41IomlwNkF7E924DreAtKw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTMyNTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz0zMDA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/crspe150729.gif

Thank you, Fergus.

http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/G8TvJTjSBRppps_QjGR7tA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztmaT1maWxsO2g9MTk0O3B5b2ZmPTA7cT03NTt3PTYwMA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/cle151021.gif

me - test 7 of comment system

How do you define a chess variant? While this may seem to be a somewhat
silly question, it bears directly on this topic. Over several years I
designed a series of games that got farther and farther away from standard
chess variants, starting with Chieftain Chess, a multi-move shatranj
variant (which for reasons of euphony was not called Chieftain Shatranj.)
During this development, the games crossed the line between chess and
wargames, thus managing to turn off both chess variantists and wargamers.
For each, the games were too much like the "other kind". But I think the
series clearly fits into the category of computer-resistant variants. 

The beginning of the series, which I developed and playtested here (thanks,
Nick Wolff and others) were expansions of Chieftain to larger boards and
more pieces, but still very much large shatranj variants with 1 new idea -
that "kings" could be multiple and would control their armies directly,
requiring the "king" to be within a few squares (command range) for a piece
to activate and move. This part of the series I developed with a friend,
and named it the Warlord games, an unfortunate choice, as that name was
already used by a commercial series of games. 

However, this worked well enough that I took the next step to create a true
chess-wargame fusion by adding terrain. In FIDE chess, "terrain" is totally
abstract, and is represented by the difference between dark and light
squares, because some pieces, bishop-types, can only move on one or the
other colored squares. I expanded from white and black to white and grey,
which all pieces can move upon, and brown and green, which restrict certain
pieces from moving onto them. The brown, green, and grey squares are
scattered across a mostly white board, and conceptually represent hills,
trees, and towns. This last part of the series, the "true wargame" part, I
have called the Command and Maneuver series, which is more  description of
the game than it is a name. My developer, Dave, worked on the first few of
these, but then moved away for a job, so I continued on my own.

The best well-playtested game in the series is The Battle of Macysburg.
It's played on a 32x32 board. Players bring 84 pieces on the board in 4
groups of 20 - 22 pieces each, coming in on Turns 1, 5, 15, and 20. There
are 2 times in the game where 1/3 of the captured pieces are brought back
as rallied troops, after turns 12 and 24. With a little care for
positioning of troops and leaders (activators/"little kings"), players can

move all their units each turn, if they so desire. There are 3 levels of
victory, ranging from driving out opponent pieces and occupying Macysburg
to chasing all the opponent's pieces off the board to destruction of the
opponent's army - reducing it to 20 pieces or less. Players may achieve
more than one level of victory, and players may each achieve some level of
victory in the same game. Yet the mechanics are simple chess moves of 1, 2,
or 3 squares for each piece, movement governed by the availability of
leaders within 2 squares of each moving piece as it starts its move. With
no wargamelike rules at all, just the rules mentioned above, the game
reproduces fairly nicely much of the strategy and tactics of Western
European combat around the 17th and 18th centuries. Mechanically, the game
is a chess variant; organizationally it's a wargame. If you consider it a
chess variant, Macysburg is computer-resistant.

This is a review of Macysburg, written by a wargamer and chess, but not
chess variant, player, complete with 2 "snapshots" of the game that give a
reasonable idea of how it looks:
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1178742/some-impressions-after-playing-battle-macysburg-sc

Here's a simple board you can use - just remove my pieces for this unsuccessful game, and place your own. And welcome to the ranks of those who have tackled 4D chess! 

/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DChess+on+Two+Boards%26settings%3DC02B

Hi, Kevin. To get the game logs, click on the site logo in the upper lefthand corner of the page. That takes you to the home page. Scroll down until you see the "What's New" section. The top line under What's New is the last game move made. Click on that kink and it will bring you to the game logs. Type "Sac Chess" in the game box, set the Age box to however far you want to go back and look - say 4 weeks. Then set the status to "Any Games", and click the "submit" button. This will bring up all the games of Sac Chess that were played in the last 4 weeks. You will get the current game between Carlos and Fergus and you will get their finished game. Note the game box is case sensitive. If you type "sac chess" or Sac chess", you will not see any games. Putting your user ID in will bring up just the games you've played in the last 4 weeks. You can use wild cards: putting "Sac *" or Sac*" will also get you those games, as will "Sa*". Typing just "S*" will bring up Seirawan, Shogi... also.
*******EDIT:
I see Carlos already gave you the short course.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/21/chess-forbidden-in-islam-rules-saudi-arabia-grand-mufti

Thanks for the comment, Kevin. Checkmate is one of the trickier parts of higher-dimensional chess. The standard method for K + Q vs K in 4D is to move the king to the/a middle square, then move your queen between your king and the enemy king, pinning it against the edge of the board. But this only works if your individual "little" boards are no bigger than 5x5. My method, by restricting diagonal moves greatly and introducing the "held king" concept, will work on any size (rectangular) "little board". It allows forced mate with K and any 2 of the Q and pair of Bs vs. a lone K. And it took a little help, as Abdul-Rahman Sibahi gave me the final piece of the hold rule - that it works on the individual matching squares in each little board. A version of the hold rules can be applied to any higher than 2D variant, though it might well have to be tweaked to fit each higher dimension. 

I like this design because it is humanly playable, looks like chess, and gives people the feel of 4D and the pieces the freedom to move through 4D space without overwhelming the players with 3D and 4D diagonals, or very many of the available 2D diagonals, for that matter. Most who design 4D chess variants using the 2D layout of 2D boards to represent 4D space give the pieces moves that are based on a 4D space that is 2D x 2D = 4D. I've found this creates a totally chaotic game, where the state of the board cannot be reasonably projected even 2 or 3 turns into the future. Pieces move so freely that in a couple moves, they can be anywhere on the board, generally by many paths which can't all possibly be guarded in 2 or 3 moves. So I get my 4D by basing movement on a 2D + 2D = 4D concept. It gives you the same 4D game space, but it restricts movements to fairly easily visualizable, fairly simple patterns that players can project 2 - 3 moves into the future. While it is fast-moving, it is not chaotic. 

Almost nobody plays it, or ever has. Grin, that's the common fate of most variants. But getting it to work, finally, taught me something about chess design. For one thing, your pawns are there as much or more to protect your opponent's pieces as yours. And the checkmate problem in higher-D chess is merely a symptom of the chaos problem in higher-D chesses. The attempt to reduce chaos is part of what led me to short-range pieces. Restricting board size only limits the number of chaotic states that can occur, bringing it down from the all-but-infinite to a smaller but still effectively infinite number in terms of human lifetimes, as individuals or as a species.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/541276/deep-learning-machine-teaches-itself-chess-in-72-hours-plays-at-international-master/

"Fergus Duniho Verified as Fergus Duniho wrote on 2016-04-12 None

The Preview and Verify mode now has a Cancel button. This is like clicking the back button, but it preserves any comments you have written, and if you're in a multi-move game, such as Extra Move Chess, it will cancel the whole move at once. The main reason I added this was because I didn't like having my comments go away every time I decided against a move."

Thank you very much - I got burned by that little feature more than once myself. I'm sure others have, also. I like what's been happening here lately.

Thank you, Jose, for the comment, rating, and especially the preset. Modern Shatranj is my simplest and in many ways most successful design. Grin, there's probably a lesson there. As for the shift in promotion rules, I consider games to be a collaboration between at least 2 people, the designer and the player(s), so "adjusting" a rule to suit the player(s) is okay with me. Just means someone is interested enough to try a game. Thanks again.

Hi, Kevin. Regarding playtesting all posted games, I'd like to offer some comments. In general, there are very few people who play chess variants. This is a sad fact of life. And of those who do play variants, only a subset are of value as playtesters. How do you find them?

Often, you find hem by posting a game and seeing if people will play it. My experience has been about as contrarian as many of my views. The games I posted without any playtesting have in general done better than the games I've posted after playtesting. Nobody plays Hyperchess or my "activator" variants, which have been fairly extensively playtested. My shatranj variants not only get played on occasion, some people even like them! They were not playtested at all before posting, because I knew they would work, and I didn't really have anybody to playtest them with, except people here.

Yes, playtesting will eliminate a lot of unplayable games.But it would eliminate such gems as Salmon P. Chess or Stanley Random, also. And it would eliminate a lot of games that may have flaws, even major ones, but also have an idea that is worth saving. Of course, I have a prejudice toward more ideas, not fewer. Not everyone agrees with me. ;)

Hi, Greg, thanks for the comment and rating. And it's nice to see some of the old gang around. To fully answer your comment, I think we'd need the 3rd shatranjeer, David P. He was the one who said it was a variant if I added promotion rules!

I've always considered games to be a collaboration between at least 2 people, the designer and the player(s). While I designed it to be a bridge between shatranj and modern chess, and so split the difference between no promo to lost pieces and unlimited pieces of any non-royal type, I certainly have no objections if people play it with promotions only to general. The only real effect it would have on the games is to extend the games with promotions a bit, because the generals are slow compared to the other pieces. 

Finally, grin, how do you tell from the current state of the board if a pawn can be captured en passant? ;)

Kevin, I keep the slide rule I used in college under an abacus on my encyclopedia bookshelves. I don't program. All my presets are bare bones board and pieces. I am a dinosaur. Gronk! ;) Seriously, I am perfectly happy with a board and pieces, it's all you need. And most games here don't have a preset, which I see meaning 1 of 2 things, they're dinosaurs like me or they aren't serious game designers. Maybe it's just because they don't believe enough in their games, but if you don't make a preset, nobody will play your game. So what you're offering is an idea, not actually a game. You are still participating in the conversation, but at a lower level, and are much less likely to get your say.

The question of how FIDE chess skills transfer is an interesting one, and is related to the value of variants in playing better FIDE. To an extent, I think it depends on how flexible as a person one is. It's been my experience that the skills can transfer well and transfer better the closer to FIDE a game is. Grin, if you want to try an experiment, play Grand Chess, Modern Shatranj, Xiang Qi, Shogi, and Jetan, and see what you think. I believe experience helps, and the broader the experience, the more help it can provide. I learned more about pawns in designing and developing Hyperchess and playing Grand Shatranj than I ever did playing and studying FIDE. (Well, and Texas Two-Step...) Until then, I didn't even realize that there was more to learn about pawns. So I am definitely in the camp that says the more diferent kinds of chess you play, the better you will play all of them.

I believe you're right about the splits in variantists' preferred games - there are many. Some games, like Bughouse or Grand Chess, have their dedicated adherents. I've also noticed designer styles generally reflect the kinds of games they like playing. But that's not only an obvious but a very blurry observation because variants are so varied. Currently there are some 5000 or so variants listed, and roughly 1000 have presets. Logistically, most people are forced to "specialize". But many who do play variants, play only 1 or 2 exclusively. I don't see that as much different than only playing FIDE.

Thank you for the comment, HG. It seems to be unanimous that promotion should only be to general. Vox populi, vox Dei! It is changed. ;)

Actually, from what I've seen, there is a lot of truth to it, but less so now than previously, I think. The standard attitude among chess teachers was that variants are bad because they take valuable training time away from learning FIDE. Now bughouse is fairly popular at chess clubs. I saw it being played a decade or so ago myself. And I've heard (read) that other FIDE-like games are being played a little. Plus the internet has opened up the world of variants to the world, if anyone bothers to look for it. So I do think we will see more variants being played. And I also think, for what that's worth, playing variants does improve your FIDE game - at least, most variants, because you need "chess thinking" to play them. There are variants which take you so far from standard chess you are no longer using chess thought, or just chess thought, to play the games.