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Betza Notation. A primer on the leading shorthand for describing variant piece moves.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
📝Glenn Overby II wrote on Sat, Jan 25, 2003 05:39 PM UTC:
Okay, I put up a page.  We can continue the discussion over here.  :)

Question: How would some of you try to unambiguously describe the Horse of
Xiangqi in Betza notation?  nN is not perfect, because the Horse can be
blocked on the orthogonal but not the diagonal.  It's a question that has
likely been solved, since the notation provides for things like p for the
cannon.  But I have not run across the answer.

Michael Nelson wrote on Sat, Jan 25, 2003 05:55 PM UTC:
I'm revising my comments as I thought of a better idea:  

Mao would be [nWF] meaning moves as Wazir then Ferz in the same move and 
cannot jump. [WF] would be a synonym for N, as would [FW].  A piece that 
could move a a Mao or could stop on the first square would be W[nWF] (the 
Rhino from Captain Spaulding Chess, for example).  A hypothetical piece 
that could move as a Mao only if the orthogonally adjacent square is 
occupied could be [jWF].

This would be useful for bent riders, too: a Gryphon would be F[nFR] 
(or F[nFWW]), while the variety of Gryphon that can't move a single 
diagonal step would be [nFR] (or [nFWW]).

Michael Nelson wrote on Sat, Jan 25, 2003 06:04 PM UTC:
A suggestion for leaps outside the 3x3 range: {x,y} where x and y are the number of squares in each direction. Thus the Pegasus would be J{1,4}.

Moussambani wrote on Sat, Jan 25, 2003 06:18 PM UTC:
doesn't n[WF] does it? We need a designator for 'outwards', as in the usual knight description 'moves one square rookwise, then <u>outwards</u> one square bishopwise'

Michael Nelson wrote on Sat, Jan 25, 2003 06:34 PM UTC:
I prefer [nWF]to n[WF] as other cases might be amiguous.  Compare [nWA] vs.
n[WA]  does the latter mean that the Alfil portion of the move may not be
a jump? But [nWA] means that the Wzir move must be to an empty square,
while [nWnA] would designate a Wazir move followed by a non-jumping Alfil
move.

I think 'outward' should be implied and we need designators for the
contrary cases, which are less common.

📝Glenn Overby II wrote on Sat, Jan 25, 2003 07:53 PM UTC:
I think that outward is the default usage within square brackets; the Rhino
is simply z[WF].

I don't know about [nWF] for the Horse.  Does nW make sense?

I'm still mulling over how to define a long leap, short of using up more
of the alphabet.  The curly brackets are possible.  Or parentheses.  And I
think the comma would be optional in that context.

Robert Shimmin wrote on Sat, Jan 25, 2003 09:39 PM UTC:
Betza's Funny Notation has its merits, but it also has its weak points. 
It's great at concisely describing combination leapers, and OK at
describing the simpler types of riders, but as one begins to contemplate
the vast variety of fairy pieces (take a look at the glossary of
Problemesis for inspiration sometimes) that have actually been used in
games or problems, it becomes obvious that describing them all accurately
requires an enormous supply of modifiers (far larger than the number of
letters in the alphabet).

As an example, just look at some of the modifiers that Jorg Knappen had to
invent to describe the various crooked nightriders used in Nachtmahr.

I have begun a time or two to formulate a more general notation, but every
system I have come up with simply requires too much effort to decode. 
Quite simply, it is less effort for someone reading the rules to read a
natural-language description than it is to decode a sufficiently
complicated compact notation.

The Funny Notation is wonderfully concise and easy to decode for the those
pieces that it was originally designed for.  But the ad-hoc piling on of
modifiers can only be taken so far before it is no longer easy to describe
or decode pieces, and I think it's pretty close to that point at present.

Michael Nelson wrote on Sat, Jan 25, 2003 09:54 PM UTC:
Glenn is right, nW doesn't make sense.  I propose that the n for the
compound move be implicit, like 'outwards'.  So [WF] designates a piece
whose move consists of moving one square orthogonally to an empty square,
followed by moving one square diagonally outward to an empty or
enemy-occupied square.  The piece that can make this move even if the
orthogonal square is occupied would be designated N.  If the orthogonally
adjacent square must be occupied, then use 
j[WF].

Anonymous wrote on Sat, Jan 25, 2003 09:57 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
Good, but when the crab is defined in funny notation you actually described the barc.

📝Glenn Overby II wrote on Sun, Jan 26, 2003 01:28 AM UTC:
Thanks for the catch.  I did get it backwards.  It is fixed now; the
notation on the page is really the Crab.  :)

Anonymous wrote on Sun, Jan 26, 2003 05:21 AM UTC:
Perhaps different symbols could be used for different types of capturing?
` short-leap capture
~ long-leap capture
! rifle capture
@ mutual capture
# 4-way sandwich capture
## 8-way sandwich capture
$ withdraw capture
% 4-way intervention capture
%% 8-way intervention capture
^ advancing capture
& co-ordination capture with royal piece
&& co-ordination capture with other pieces of same type
+ mutual capture and explosion on squares a wazir's move away
* mutual capture and explosion on adjactant squares

and a few others:
<> swaps place with friendly piece
<|> swaps place with enemy piece
<||> swaps place with any piece
>< immobilises adjactant enemy pieces
>|< immobilises ALL adjactant pieces
>+< immobilises enemy pieces a wazir's move away
>+|< immobilises ALL pieces a wazir's move away
= moves to the opposite side of the board before carrying out move(a1 to
h1, b2 to g2, etc)

gnohmon wrote on Sun, Jan 26, 2003 07:55 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
'Betza's Funny Notation has its merits, but it also has its weak points.'

Well, yes. Why do you think I gave it that name?

My primary goal was to create a notation that would be easy to read and
that would be capable of describing many different pieces. In this
respect, of course the funny notation was a great success. It is now
almost a standard, and whatever notation is the next advance to supersede
my early attempts will probably contain some degree of backwards
compatibility.

I wanted as much as possible to avoid the use of all the strange
punctuations. This was because in my real-life career as a programmer for
3270 emulations used in hundreds of countries by tens of thousands of
users, I was intensely aware of the variations, not only in standard
'national ascii' but also in substandard mickeysoft code pages. I
eventually had to use square brackets [] but they often came out badly
because Hans's computer would treat them as dutch asciii mickeysoft
nonstandard code page.

My earlier notation, largely unpublished, used more squigglies and angles
and ^%$#!()*& stuff. 

The ultimate notation, that will be determined by international committees
sanctioned by the ISO (International Standards Organization) will of
course succeed at describing the most common pieces within the ASCII code
page, and the second tier of most common pieces within 8859-1. Unicode
will be exploited to carry the possibilities to their ultimate.

You cannot imagine that a work of this size could be conducted by a single
person. My funny notation was never intended to be the ultimate, merely a
necessary step along the way. I think that, as such, it has been a *great*
success.

Likewise, Chess with Different Armies. A hundred years from now, most
likely nobody will play chess without different armies, and very likely
nobofy will use the primitive armies that the long-dead Betza devised. (I
do hope to be remembered a bit.)
The golden age of chess variant development has only just begun.

Peter Aronson wrote on Tue, Apr 22, 2003 04:24 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
This is probably pointless, and almost certainly frivolous, but I have been thinking about syntax to partially describe promotion lately, and have a proposal. <hr> A pieces that promotes is indicated by an <b>=</b> sign at the end of its movement description, optionally followed by a piece description (what it promotes to), a set of piece descriptions enclosed in <b>(</b> <b>)</b> and separated by commas or spaces, or a one of <b>*</b>, <b>+</b> or <b>-</b>. <blockquote> <p><b>*</b> indicates promotion to any type of nonroyal, nonpawn piece that started play on either side of the board. <p><b>+</b> indicates promotion to any type of nonroyal, nonpawn piece that started play on the owner's side of the board. <p><b>-</b> indicates promotion to any previously captured nonpawn piece. </blockquote> <p> A <b>=</b> at the end of a piece without anything else simply states that the piece promotes in some (most likely obscure) manner. If a piece can promote in different ways at different times, multiple promotion strings separated by multiple <b>=</b>'s are possible. <p> This scheme does not specify how or where promotion occurs. <h4>Examples</h4> <li><u>FIDE Pawn</u>: fnWfcF=* -or- fnWfcF=(N,B,R,RB) <p> <li><u>Makruk Pawn</u>: fnWfcF=F <p> <li><u>Gothic Isles Chess Pawn</u>: fnWfcF=FfW=- <p> <li><u>Rococo Cannon Pawn</u>: gWFnWF=- <p> <li><u>Shogi Rook</u>: R=FR </ul> <hr> So there it is. Hardly complete, but that's funny notation for you.

John Lawson wrote on Wed, Apr 23, 2003 01:27 AM UTC:
The first thing I see right off that I would change is the = sign.  I think
the use of a > sign would more clearly imply 'becoming'.  So fnWfcF=*
would be fnWfcF>*.
Also, although you didn't state it, I infer the - for promotion to a
previously captured piece means from the owner's original array.

Ben Good wrote on Wed, Apr 23, 2003 02:44 AM UTC:
i'd caution against your use of = for 'other promotions.' = is already standard shogi notation for no promotion, and standard among problemists for stalemate.

Peter Aronson wrote on Thu, Apr 24, 2003 08:06 PM UTC:
Well, if we were to use <b>></b> instead of <b>=</b> (as John suggested), we'd avoid the problems that Ben sees. But unfortunately, it is really easy to lose greater thans in HTML.

John Lawson wrote on Thu, Apr 24, 2003 10:19 PM UTC:
OK, that's sensible. Are any of the various forms of brackets ), }, ], easy to work with? What about |, or ~ ?

JorgKnappen wrote on Thu, Sep 18, 2003 09:54 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
This is an excellent pedagocical presentation of Ralph Betza's
funny notation as it is. Thanks to Glenn for this.

Freederick wrote on Tue, Aug 17, 2004 04:11 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I'd like to suggest 'a' for approach capture, and 'w' for withdrawal capture. These letters are not yet used, and they would facilitate describing Ultima-like pieces, which cannot be notated without this addition.

Anonymous wrote on Fri, Feb 22, 2008 03:36 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Brilliant! A real time-saver! I personally think this is one of the best pages on this web site! Tip of the hat, Ralph!

George Duke wrote on Sat, Jun 21, 2008 06:13 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Standard reference.

Anonymous wrote on Mon, Apr 12, 2010 04:40 PM UTC:
What about making crosswords with Betza's notation? For example, there may be questions like this: 'Piece, wich was used first in Chinese chess?' - answer should be 'mRcpR'. Of course, it's joke, but interesting idea (i have seen somewhere crossword with chemical elemants).

Joe Joyce wrote on Mon, Apr 19, 2010 03:33 AM UTC:
Might I offer the possibly sacrilegious comment that it's time to update Betza notation? As excellent as it is, time has moved on, and new pieces cannot be easily described using the current notation. Several people, including myself, have done some extension of this notation to describe our own pieces, if nothing else. 

Once upon a time, I would have proposed a project here to update the notation, bring it into the 21st century. I probably know better now. So I'll just ask for everyone who has extended Betza notation to let us all know what you've done, with at least a brief but thorough description and a link to the complete work. 

I would suggest that Ralph's prohibition on symbols can be relaxed now, as it's unlikely that even minimally careful use of standard typewriter symbols will cause that many problems on today's webpages. 

Was going to end here [many might wish that I had], but decided I'd throw my hat into the ring with notation I developed for shortrange pieces of varying complexity. I use this notation and associated icons extensively in my designs, having found it a very useful shorthand for this sort of piece. So I'm hoping that all those game pages won't have to be changed at some time in the future. And while I'm not overly optimistic this will wind up next to Betza's work, I'll give it a serious try with the following condensed discussion of the warmachine and its various possible moves:

DW
0] Combine the dabbabah and wazir into the warmachine. The generic
piece can be identified as 'DW'. This identifies the components
without specifying any particular movement pattern.

D/W
1] OR. The warmachine may move as either one of its components, that is,
like a wazir or a dabbabah.

D+W
2] AND (linear). The warmachine may move as either or both of its
components, in either order. It may not change direction during this move.

D +/- W
3] AND (nonlinear). The warmachine may move as either or both of its
components, in either order. It *may* change direction during this move.

D/W + D/W
4] And-Or (two-step linear rider). Our basic DW piece may move as either
of its components, then it may [or may not] move as either of its
components again.

D/W +/- D/W
5] AND-OR (two-step nonlinear rider). Our basic DW piece may move as
either of its components, then it may [or may not] move as either of its
components again. It *may* change direction during this move.

[D+W]/[A+F]
6] [AND]-OR-[AND] (compound two-step linear rider)
The War Elephant. This piece may move as either the linear Hero, as seen above, or as its diagonal analog, the linear Shaman.

http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/joe-s-strange-notation is the wiki page with illustrations and a companion iconology for identifying how the pieces move.

Anonymous wrote on Sun, May 9, 2010 12:43 PM UTC:
I like this idea. However, i would prefer C instead L and Z instead J ('camel' and 'zebra'). I think, it's more memorizable.

George Duke wrote on Mon, Jul 1, 2013 04:54 PM UTC:
See Betza's ''squigglies and angles'' of this comment, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=2466. Betza also has a Rule Zero, http://www.chessvariants.org/misc.dir/rule-zero.html, that was used for a few years to save unnecessary wording. Since the same rules get reapplied, Betza Notation can extend to entire CV not just piece-types, and there could become no need to use words for rules-set, just mathematical notation. Ralph Betza above is inviting someone to develop such system, and in fact Joe Joyce was one of the developers beyond the Betza Notation of this Overby article description.

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