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Joe Joyce wrote on Wed, Jul 7, 2010 04:05 PM EDT:
George Duke made an interesting comment while discussing Jetan. He said:
(1) It is a straight-line descent from Burroughs to contemporary Joyce in
short-range projects ongoing... Published 100 years ago, the fact is Jetan
acquired widely-assorted imitators and acceptance within its own new genre
-- being one of just few dozen Chess clusters of all time outstanding...
short-range project pieces acquire effectiveness with moderate weakening in
keeping with others of their kind...

In keeping with tradition [George and my tradition, established about 2005,
of arguing over everything], I will disagree slightly with George about my
own work, but he has made an excellent start to a discussion of ERB's
chess ideas. I hope to see it continue. A discussion of Edgar Rice
Burroughs and chess would be a valuable addition to our current Comments
section. I've never played the game, but was fascinated by it as a kid,
and would love to learn how it plays. 

Burroughs' game, from what I remember, was essentially created from the
ground up by him [to the best of my knowledge], and certainly deserves to
be at the head of its own chess cluster. My particular work [difficult to
distinguish from Christine Bagley-Jones particular work] in the shortrange
project comes out of the shatranj cluster, heading in the general direction
of Jetan, and landing right next to it with Lemurian Shatranj [thus
demonstrating that the Lemurians were descendants of the original Martian
colonists of Earth.] But it veers away again with David Paulowich's
Opulent Lemurian Shatranj, which is clearly the next and best game in
'my' shatranj series. My own follow-up to LemS was Chieftain Chess, which
actually belongs in its own cluster, perched by the edge of chess'
conceptual space, that mental area in which all chess games reside. 

How many clusters are there, and how are they related? Clearly, FIDE is a
child of shatranj that resides in the cluster containing the games using
the basic BNRQK pieces and their compounds, amazon, archbishop, centaur,
chancellor, dragons bishop and rook. This cluster is connected to the
shatranj supercluster [which it is, being a cluster of clusters] by a
bridge of games that include Tamerlane's Chess, for example. 

Clearly Shogi and Xiangqi stand at the front of clusters. What are the
other large clusters, or even small, distinctive ones? Do R. Wayne
Schmittberger's Wildebeest Chess and C. Bagley-Jones Sky delimit a cluster
that employs the long-leapers? Surely Ultima, Rococo, Maxima triangulate on
the center of another cluster that sits on the edge of chess. 

How do you categorize Falcon Chess, or Mats Winther's work? As a general
category, you could see them all as 'one-off' games, FIDE Plus, as
distinct from the first category of FIDE, above, which could be
characterized as SuperFIDE. [As an aside, it would seem highly likely that
any 'next chess' would come from one of these two categories.] This is
the most common of game designs we find, for obvious reasons. And in most
cases, the games are 'add-on' rather than 'replacement' games. They add
a new piece to the existing FIDE pieces [or shogi pieces or Xiangqi...],
increasing board size, rather than removing a standard chess piece and
replacing it with a new one. 

Ralph Betza's Chess with Different Armies is another supercluster, albeit
a very small one. CwDA established a genre, based on themed replacements of
standard FIDE pieces. The theme of course is the replacement of the
different pieces with variants on just one piece, a different piece for
each army. [Hmm, did he do a queen-themed army? That would be a very
interesting little contest: design a queen-themed CwDA army that plays
evenly with the others.] But the armies *are* different; rather than having
a common origin, they have a common value. And I think they would fall a
bit ahead of now on that hundred year Jetan to shortrange project
conceptual timeline. 

Clearly the overall geography of 'chess space' is organized
evolutionarily, with Darwin, Lamarck, and mixmaster all operating to
varying degrees. For a good example of mixmaster, you have a little cluster
of games that all attempt, apparently with varying perceived amounts of
success, to combine [elements of] Xiangqi, Shogi, and FIDE into one [more
or less normal-sized] game. But what I've discussed so far is but a
glimpse of general principles. These are the beginnings of the broad
outlines of the geography, but what are the key factors, where are the
continents, and how do they connect? 

Size alone is not an adequate factor, but level of replacement, level of
addition, are telling for the kind of game you'd expect. Jetan, for
example, at 10x10 is only slightly larger than the 'big three' versions
of chess played today, but its level of replacement is 100%, and it adds a
pair of pieces. What tells you most about how it will play as a game? 

Well, another excessively long post, so I'll stop here, If anyone wants to
join in, feel free.

George Duke wrote on Thu, Jul 8, 2010 11:15 AM EDT:
Uh-oh, expanded topic. In principle, the 4000 CVs here and 2000 more in
book 'Encyclopedia CVs' can be actually reduced to about 20 clusters having each mostly over 100 CVs. In the process, authorship when unworthy could well be dropped for up to 1/2 of them as duplicative, copycat, or plagiaristic; and any substance present could be inserted into the older precedential art as added explanatory paragraph. Only less than 10% the CVs would still be left out as unclassifiable -- the way Gilman's Man & Beasts does now for piece-types themselves in having M&B21, ''Lords High Everything-Else'' a catch-all miscellaneous file.  Hutnik in IAGO systematization also begins what are clusters of CVs as Gilman does for the pieces M&B-wise.  Also, what are NextChess Track I and II but two super-clusters first-approximate? Where does a rank beginner, like f.i.d.e. master or grandmaster, go? Or someone not so totally ignorant?  Typically, the specialist G.M. is ignorant of CVs, chess evolution, and history. Uninformed as a child but impressionable with native intelligence, good instinct and a will to learn possibly, the orthodox ranking chessist, we owe her/him something even better.  The INDEX of CVPage he may try, but it does not reveal clusters.  ''Large CVs'', ''Three Dimensional,''  ''Round,'' ''Historical'' in that Index are alone not cutting it to the heart of the matter and dilemma. Clusters would be cross-categorical in for instance being based more often on piece-types than size, shape, history.  The outside chess master is bewildered, perhaps thinking Capablanca's is original from recent 1920s. The unfortunate individual knows no better. Is Capa's large or medium anyway?  The ''See Also'' link in articles sometimes irrelevantly cites other different work not similar clusteral conformity. Suggesting Cluster number I as first obvious is Carrera's, invented 1617, now expanded to over 100 CVs ranging from 64 to 100 squares.  They mostly have Centaur(BN) and Champion(RN), but minimal entry into the Carrera cluster allows two Cardinals(BN). You whoever may prefer calling them that, Cardinal for Centaur or Marshall for Champion.  Clusterings as methodology, and the cluster #1 Carrera itself of 100-150 cvs, are robust in handling such nuances as alternate nomenclature, as well as sizing from 64 of Tutti-Frutti to 100 Capablanca's first try.  By extension, mere addition of Amazon (RBN) maintains Carrra-cluster status.  Now then we think of one resultant Cluster, CARRERA, not 125 separate CVs scattered about. If any variant Index would in some separate, expanded or overlapping list, besides essential Alphabetical etc., say CARRERAS -- plural without the apostrophe -- we understand, and professionals of expert CVers can pick, choose, mix, match within the group as such, for improved accountability and perfectibility.  
http://www.chesscafe.com/archives/archives.htm.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Jul 10, 2010 01:58 AM EDT:
Well one cluster that comes to mind is those applying Shogi rules to
non-Shogi games. To the established Chessgi I have added not only Bishogi
but also my Frontofhouse, Mitred, and Horn Rimmed variants.

Joe Joyce wrote on Thu, Jul 15, 2010 12:05 AM EDT:
Charles, your suggestion of considering games with shogi drops added as a
cluster category got me thinking about mutators, and whether mutators
indicate clusters or something else. 

My first thought was no, they don't form clusters. It's like
dimensionality, it's not enough to determine a cluster of similar games.
Trivially, not all 2D CVs are in the same cluster. I considered the 2D and
3D versions of my shatranj game, and your current 3D game, and figured it
was apparent that 3D Great Shatranj is closer to Great Shatranj than it is
to Redistribution 3d Chess. Consider shogi, chessgi, and bughouse... yeah,
well, there is a bit of likeness in those games...

Second thought was that, yes, that is a very strong similarity. Consider
that the conceptual space of chess variants has more than 3 dimensions, and
I don't even know what to call all the ones we are using right now. I
considered that 'viewing angle' might be important to what made a
cluster, and that you could see things in different ways. But then consider
the line between GtS, 3DGtS, and Hyperchess. That reasoning would cluster
Great Shatranj [2D] with Hyperchess [4D]...

That line of thought took things to mutators, or conditions, or elements,
something that could apply to many different individuals, groups, and
clusters. Then I considered that what I was looking at was an evolutionary
taxonomy of CVs, so things like dimensionality and the shogi drop rule
represent environments that games must adapt to, to be able to exist in
that specific area of chess. An environment can tentatively be described as
a condition that can be applied to a whole range of games with success.
Like Alicing, which is its own environment on the fringes of neighboring
dimensions. The original Alice took chess to a limited 3D game, sort of
straddling the border between the two dimensions. But you can alice any 2D
game, or 3D, 1D, or 4. So third thought is no. You have described an
environment, not a cluster.

Do you agree this is a valid and useful distinction, or do you prefer
something else?

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