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In everyday language ''according to Holye'' means on the highest authority. Before astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) came up with The Big Bang to ridicule mainstream cosmologists, there was Edmond Hoyle (1672-1769), Whist expert and author of definitive textbooks on card games, including Bridge forerunner Whist. More recent publication 'According to Hoyle' was first published in 1935 (Bridge was invented by Vanderbilt in 1925.) and now has Richard Frey as author by 1996 Edition. 'According to Hoyle'(1996) describes under Chess among its 200 standard rules-sets for card and other games, ''The Knight has a peculiar move, best described as ''from corner to diagonally opposite corner of a rectangle three squares by two. (Dr. Lasker)'' So, current 'AtH' uses authority of GM Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941), since after all Chess was well-described before F.I.D.E. formed at Paris in 1924. Lasker and rival GM Capablanca of course were openminded about significant variants of Chess (unlike today's practical censoring of all but mild-mannered FRC or Chess960). Follow-up could connect Lasker and Capablanca with dozens of rules variations. It might have been better for FIDE, in hindsight, if at their inception was sanctioning of some other specific forms too, like then-new Kriegspiel or even Capablanca-Carrera's.
Mutators. Gifford writes 20.May.2008, ''If we start with Shatranj, it is easy to vary it and get Chess Shogi, Xiangqi etc. It is easy to see these three games as Shatranj variants. Of course one can keep varying pieces, boards and rules to the extreme, and by doing so end up with having something no one would recognize as having come from Chess. In this manner for example, an artist could start with a drawing of a rabbit, and create a horrific beast by increasing the size, replacing fur with scales, replacing ears with bat ears, fluffy tail with long reptilian tail, etc. When the artist is done, we have nothing that would be considered as a rabbit variant(though it is).'' --Gary Gifford in ''Tzaar a CV?'' 20.May.2008
So one design can morph into another systematically, and we can get more methodical, even mathematical, in treatment of applied Mutators. Let's start with how far removed are Xiangqi and OrthoChess. (1)Trim 10x9 board to 8x8 and ignore divisions of river and palace. (2) Enhance Knight to leaping. (3) Enhance Elephant to all-diagonal but never jumping. (4) Replace two weak Guards with one strong Queen. (5) Add 3 Pawns repositioning all to Rank two, with Western way of diagonal capture and one-time two-step. (6) Omit Cannons. (7) Polish off with specialized en passant, castling. /// So, Xiangqi and OrthoChess are arguably roughly only these seven steps apart. If we wildly tolerate margins of 7 Mutators, Xiangqi and Mad Queen are even same game.
How far is Rococo removed from C-Carrera's(10x10 version)? (1) Drop border square distincion of Rococo. (2) Add paired Rooks. (3) Add two Pawns and change Cannon Pawns to all Orthodox Pawns. (4) Change Long Leapers to Bishops. (5) Eliminate Immobilizer and introduce now ordinary Queen. (6) Change Swapper and Withdrawer to Knights. (7) Change Chameleon to Champion(RN). (8) Change Advancer to Centaur(BN). (9) Add en passant appropriate for 10x10, castling. /// So where Xiangqi & OrthoChess are (6 degrees) or ''7 degrees'' separated, Rococo & Capablanca-Carrera are (9-) or 10-separated. [ Tangential postscripts: (A) Programmers would recognize preparatory algorithm in such above points. Using computer program functions, differing in languages, themselves could distort measurement of Mutators looked at plainly linguistically or mathematically. (B) ''6 (or 7) degrees of separation'' in popular culture happens to refer to how far 7 billion people (laughably tripling since 1950) are maximally separated stepwise by ''knowing'' mutually other individuals. (C) Scientists in terms of wavelengths recognize colours in infinite numbers, but all-time human languages would recognize only from 10 to 10^3 colours; the rainbow is taken to have seven(7) ROYGBIV colours over its particular infinity. -- all proving Rules-Mutators inevitably impinge on subjectivity. ]
''The Laws of Chess'' govern FIDE play. Mere rules ad infinitum galvanise peculiar field of chess variants. Chess variant artists frankly enjoy their pastime rather as do likeminded addicts to orthogonal basketweaving or needlepointing. In their subculture, off-chess prolificists think nothing of re-use without attribution and outright plagiarism. It's the nature of their game, self-absorbed and unable to stop concatenating new chains. Why not instead spend 2 months only critiqueing preexisting work of others? Why not actually playing fully 20 scores of the individual's chosen favourite? Out of the question for these self-annointed artist-specialists. Rather than another slightly-different or enlarged copycat, what about definition as to when ''new'' game is tantamount to equivalence with pre-existing ''CV''? Or create strict hierarchy of preference within a class? (Class Ultima, Rococo, Maxima, Optima, Fugue, Stupid would be one of hundreds of examples, all needing and a few worthy of some organization.) Prolificists are not interested in fine-point definition or analysis. After all, theirs is an *Art*, and unusually one not without intimidation against nonbelievers(who would comprise 99% of the world's billion Chess players). Now each prolific designer has particular style. ''CharlesGilman'' uses no formal Identification, so comments purportedly cannot be held to account or checked for consistency. Joe Joyce's includes contempt for historicity. He says that whether form or piece were once employed even decades ago is irrelevant to right of immediate self-expression in still one more personal set of rules without standards.
Joe Joyce wrote on Fri, Sep 19, 2008 12:24 AM UTC:From your recent post in this thread: 'Joe Joyce's [style] includes contempt for historicity. He says that whether form or piece were once employed even decades ago is irrelevant to right of immediate self-expression in still one more personal set of rules without standards.' If you wish to call it contempt, you may. I will say a lot of it is lack of knowledge. Even with 4 years of being online/aware of CVs, I still have a lot of history to learn. And I strongly disagree about my purported lack standards; but I will address that later. Here, I wish to acknowledge and affirm that, while the attitude you ascribe me is quite wrong, the underlying premise - that a designer has/should have free access to anything and everything - I believe in and will support. ;-) Designing things over and over - the history of science is replete with examples: Darwin and Wallace, Newton and Leibnitz. And the history of the world is far the richer for it. The Impressionists are a school, not a single painter; the Red Cross/Red Crescent is not just Florence Nightingale. Chess is not only found on 8x8 to 10x10 boards. It is not contempt to acknowledge that two heads are better than one, and a different viewpoint may give a new insight. Enough of the philosophy. Lets talk games.
Thanks all for follow-up to year-old thread of Jeremy's ''Multiform.'' Joyce misses the point that his bravely reviving the two tracks thoroughly excludes Joe Joyce anymore from the fringe and proves him possessive of standards. CVPage of 1990's Track One is FIDE replacement. Track Two is divertissement, bauble, entertainment like Betza's came to be. Designers hopefully certainly have access to everything, if only they would avail themselves. The full record being present thanks to CVPage and 'ECV', there is really no excuse otherwise. Ideally write-ups should be steeped in precedent and priority and then creatively diverge. Now one and all are wholly accountable to others' intellectual property, the copyrights and patents. Admittedly there is extreme variance in consequences. In the fun and games of CVPage, trespassing others' idea is a light matter and I participate in it. The object hereabouts is more artwork than gameplay, more wordplay than scholarship. Yet stooping to ''designing things over and over'' is silly, when there is such established record, nothwithstanding everyone's right to try to publish something. Imaginativeness ought to mean new not recycled, but capabilities vary. It is also matter of emphasis. No more frivolously than 90% of CVPage games, I have 10^50 CVs fully interpretable at ''91.5 Trillion...'' Comments, trying utmost to be productive in rules-sets as humanly possible.
' Trofim Denisovich Lysenko: ''Any science is class-oriented by its nature.'' Joseph Stalin: ''HA-HA-HA! And what about Mathematics?'' ' --true exchange from year 1948 recorded by Rossianov in Isis 84 (1993). Obdurate Stalin did not realize depth of his ha-ha-ha: any more perhaps than chess players realize depths to come. Class and classification. The changing corpus of Chess partially anticipated by fevered variant free-f(or)-all 2000-2009. ''Mathematics is rich, even dense, with interconnections, but it exhibits no unity,'' stresses mathematician Ivor Grattan-Guinness. More and more activity comes under scrutiny of science and math, but by themselves they fail to fulfill Leibnitz's ''pre-established harmony.'' Chess is different when ahead of its time perceiving unity. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov: ''The development of Chess is closely connected to the development of civilization. Everything that happens is in one way or another connected to Chess. In the 1970's there were two worlds fighting each other. Two political systems were in conflict--which one is better? And then we have a situation on the chessboard with the representative of the capitalist world, Fischer, on one side, and Boris Spassky on the other side. These two worlds fought each other. .... So, Chess was faster -- it foresaw this event. Chess is a mirror reflection of our life. Then, during perestroika--this unclear situation mirrored our unclear situation in chess, the split of world champions.'' --Ilyumzhinov from J.C. Hallman 'The Chess Artist' (2003)
By beginning to organize, it gets to where the OrthoChessists can be ignored as obsolete, not vice versa. // Do CVs need absolute algebra? One to which all CV Rules-sets would be reducible. All combinations of relation, connectivity, proposition and associated laws (rules), would mitigate cataloguing (NextChess2 -- and now necessary next NextChess3) and discover relations otherwise obscure. Variantists, even prolificists, are really algebraists. Their building blocks are Methods of movement and Mutators. Beyond algebra, the roots of unity: group theory. Different mutators, even apparently opposite in their effects, are found to be the same in the over-all structure. CVs of origination far apart by dissonant individuals and cultures will have been determined to be one, or of the same, with more sophistication. Isomorphic. By one reckoning (this thread 21.August.2008) we tested and find Shatranj and OrthoChess are 4 steps removed from each other, whereas Rococo is 10 steps away from Carrera 8x10. Since there is no possibility of playing even minuscule fraction of proposed Rules-combinations, probability itself may be the ingredient missing for claim of progress. That is, because each CVer follows somewhat predictable subjective pattern, in design, one puts up a ''new'' CV without an inventor (or just do not look), and usually it has some characteristic stamp of whomever. We know at once who is doing it, muddy the water, this time responsible for the latest fashion, or infraction, or infarction. Yet since we cannot be sure, it becomes just another part of the equation. Most likely, every CV is itself an Error message, or anonymously of unknown origin.
In two pages logicist grounding, Bertrand Russell and A.N. Whitehead prove ''the occasionally useful proposition'' 1 + 1 = 2, in 'Principia Mathematica' 1912 Volume 2 110.643. Within the same year 1913 'History of Chess' A.J.R. Murray recounts the then 400 years of Crazy Queen 64 squares, continuing the then 1300 years of 64 squares. Meanwhile Shogi had expanded to eighty-one and Xiangqi ninety. Mad/Crazy Queen is tantamount in her algebra to 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, as in Rook + Knight + Bishop = Unity by mutual exclusivity of destinations. [''He roller-coaster, he got early warning/ He got muddy water, he one mojo filter/ He say 'One and one and one are three'/ Got to be good-looking cos he's so hard to see...'' --Beatles' Abbey Road 1969] Needless to say, the story has sequel. Because R+N+B+F = unity more primitively, fundamentally, and finally by same principle of mutual exclusivity. 64 squares herself comes a cropper now, fortunately at last, because there is no crowding four elemental logical units onto 8x8 retaining King and Queen. There are still many, many, many, many (infinite?) possibilities for all of 8x10, 8x12 (what fifth piece?), 8x14 (what sixth piece?), 10x10, 9x10, 10x9. No bastion of orthodoxy will take up historic one-of-a-kind debate. Expect nothing from controversial websites like ChessBase with adherents being professed dyed-in-the-wool OrthoChessists. It would take more imagination and learning than any of them happen to have.
There are four basic Chess units RNBF, and three auxiliaries to perfect the game PKQ. King, the target, is one-stepping Queen. Falcon cannot be handled well by computer. If Falcon stands at a1 and tries for c4, the intermediate squares are a2, b2, c3, and b3. Call them A, B, C and D respectively (D being 'b3'). All four occupied block the move: ABCD. Any three occupied block the move a1-c4: ABC, ABD, ACD, BCD. These two block it: AB, CD, BD. AC does not. No one intermediate square occupied blocks it. Likewise, certain mathematics back to Euclid cannot be handled by computer. Namely especially, anthyphairesis. Fractions replaced anthyphairesis, which is reciprocal subtraction, used to test incommensurability by the Greeks 2000+ years ago. For follow-up Comments here, anthyphairesis presents patterns still regarded as apparently unpredictable. There is no pattern as to whether sum or difference of two ratios (37:8 or -/2:1) is commensurable or not, nor even what their anthyphairesis is. The algorithm for 37:8 = [4,1,1,1,2] (ending therefore commensurable) is just successive divisions taking the remainder as divisor in new ratio. Modular arithmetic.
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Nov 5, 2008 05:45 PM UTC:I would not say that the Falcon is difficult to handle for a computer. Just that (1) It is a piece with comparatively many (potential) moves, so naturaly it requires more effort to generate its move than of pieces with fewer moves. But it is not worse than, say, a Queen. (2) It behaves differently than other pieces w.r.t. pins, due to its multi-path nature. This means it need separate code from the other pieces to handle it. But this could just as easily be blamed on the other pieces as on the Falcon. In a game with only Facons it would not be more difficult than in a game with only other pieces. It is true that for divergent sliders and lame leapers you have to examine several board squares to know if you can do a single move to one. This is also true for distant moves of normal sliders, but there every square you pass gives you a valid non-capture, to which you could assign the effort, so you examine only one board square per generated move. But, unfortunately, almost all search effort of a computer goes into its capture search, and generating non-captures is a waste of time there.
Muller, I assume you received the two October emails not to use patented Falcon, nor indicate it is licensed after 2008. At any rate, I know Chess Variant Page will honour my right to keep any program of yours with Falcon out of CVP link in 2009-2010. There I mention my UK attorney's office for one source of necessary enforcement. You stress that you have only invested 100 lines of code, so clearly there should be felt no loss on your part. Good luck with your preferred CVs. Your attitudes toward Falcon have been continually offensive. Larry Smith has pointed out you do not listen to others' input. Falcon is multi-path, not lame, as Aronson's Horus discusses. There Editor Aronson describes Falcon as the exact OPPOSITE of lame provisionally, but then rejects the word at all for leapers. Regardless, ''multi-path'' is part of the Falcon program's vocabulary. ''Lame'' is in CVP glossary for radial pieces not oblique ones. You make no concessions to value-added over 18 years of Falcon development in its articles and literature. You act like something is automatically due you, and others also have read lack of respect for intellectual property, copyright, trademark, patent in your remarks, not only with regard to Falcon. Having had nothing to do with our development from 1992 through 2007, we would not want you, speaking for the entire Falcon team. With any other programmer we would be open to discussion from Zillions to ChessV to Brainking (with which I do consult) or some Game Courier further development. In your case, there is no such inclination. Remove Falcon from your Winboard and whatever other named programs there have been trials at early convenience within 2009-2010. The catalogue of rudeness on your part could reach fifteen points over these three or four, that I will spare this thread and Chess Variant Page. For example, you refer to an expired patent as unmentionable while in same context associating Falcon USP5690334. Trice's patent ran out in 2006; it does not exist except as copyright like any one's rules-set becomes automatically copyrighted. Trice's method itself has reverted to the common domain. One other example of your peculiar waywardness is calling piece that behaves like Darter, as Falcon and many Jetan pieces, ''handicapped.'' Such descriptions can only be characterized as knot-headed. Go forth with your wonderful programming of other variants, excluding Falcon. One further factor is your poor writing skills in descriptions of Leaper, Hopper, Rider at your website. Fine knowledgeable programmer that you are, you have stated favourites among CVs not including Falcon, so we must and can be therefore in complete agreement, to go entirely separate ways with different subject matter in CVs.
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Nov 6, 2008 08:51 AM UTC:Dear mr. Duke, As I mentioned here before, my policy is to respect the intellectual property and wishes of variant inventors. Future releases of my software will therefore not contain explicit support for any Falcon pieces. What I already did cannot be undone. Neither do I see any moral obligation to do so: I asked you for permission to do what I did, out of courtesy, and you gave it in public on these pages. If you now want to take the stance of a treacherous and backstabbing business partner... Well, it be so noted, but I will of course ignore it in my actions. I look forward to chatting with your attorney. The longer the better. I hope you pay him well! :-) As far as I am aware of, your patent is not valid in the part of the world where I live. And even if it were, there is the tiny matter that the permission you gave will be considered legally binding. It is immaterial if I spent 3 lines of code or 300,000 on it. Perhaps my code is so good that it is worth $100,000 a line. ;-)
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Nov 6, 2008 11:20 AM UTC:If mr Duke's memory span is so short, it might be a good idea to remind him of his earlier words: | Muller was asking about Falcon Chess in Joker or Smirf; I forget | the exact question and am more interested in relooking at Jeliss | and Trenholme articles this week. Just as Greg Strong was about to | finish Falcon Chess for ChessV, it is fine to put Falcon in engine | free of charge throughout years 2008, 2009 and 2010 to play, so long| | as strictly not commercial (unlike standards-degrading Zillions). | Please inform what is going on, and put the patent #5690334 two or | more times about the Rules or Board, since ultimately we would like | to market Falcon material too. It may be coincidence, but Strong took | offense at our critique of his grotesque game ''Catalysm'' and never | returns since. [Muller rates 'Poor' over at Falcon Chess and says he | has not decided whether it is good. If it is deemed not good, please | do not include FC, but something not commercial like that can be up | to you during 2008-2010.] Note especially the incoherence of his opinions: first he would never consider the 'standards-degrading' Zillions for permitting it to play Falcon, and now that he apparently takes a dislike to the imagined acts of the author of Fairy-Max, he thinks he can reverse the roles at a whim. Well, George, let me tell you a secret: if people see how you reserve the right to revoke your agreements, no programmer in the world would ever be prepared to implement Falcon Chess. Knowing that you would be likely to cause them having done their work in vain, from the first day you happen to step out of bed with your wrong leg first. They would not touch anything that depended on permission of such a deceitful business partner. The bottom line is this: you gave permission for me to put up a non-commercial Chess program capable of playing Falcon Chess on my website upto and including 2010, and I intend to do so. I don't think that violates any rules of the CV website, in which case I will maintain links to that page from here. It seems you badly need some lessons in manners and civilized behavior, and I will be more than happy to teach you! In court or otherwise!
''We are the destructive meteorite. We never fully give up our individual interests; that is why we are not a superorganism like ants.'' -- Edward O. Wilson // You remember those experiments where one drop more changes the colour of the solution, tripping the reaction. Chess is at such trigger point. It's obvious, Chess history so far is all pre-history, done, fini. Anand at ChessBase 1.October.2008: ''Ten years ago I said that 2010 would be the end, Chess would be exhausted.'' What holds it back are super-performers financial interests: Anand, Kasparov, Kramnik and 100 others only. What is in store is not hundreds of Internet Presets, but a dozen or two for deep theory, as 8x8 OrthoChess is dumped, progressively. That is because, as Rich Hutnik teaches, people want a set challenge to try to solve, a logical pattern to prove their competence, even if it takes the experts decades to master. Chess has been big part of culture at times on four continents, such as mediaevally and during Ben Franklin's and Philidor's 18th Century. Today Larry Evans calls Chess a minor art. People ask me, ''What good is it?'' What CVers do, under proliferation, is even more minor, a minor, minor practice of a minor art. Not wholly honest in attribution of sources, not notable for courteous dialogue, defending their turf unlike the quote above suggesting common good. Turf that chess-savvy outsiders value not a whit anyway. But CVers' craft or art (nomenclature, orthogonal basketweaving, the whole ball of wax) may yet find its groove, as Chess itself revolutionizes, but not by fiat. Or CVs as proliferating artwork may die out and Chess herself be none the worse. ''We have assumed that all systems require leadership, that we always need an internal, centralized command, and that's not true. And many systems would work better if we allowed them to organize themselves.'' -- Steven Strogatz
Eleusis Chess. I want to develop the Rules better in 2009 for Eleusis Chess but claim idea first early here. Robert Abbott's great game Eleusis goes, roughly: play card after card, and some are rejected by the opponent, the object being to determine the secret governing rules of play by inductive logic, for examples, Black-White-Black, prime numbers, Fibonacci, perfect numbers, add 1 subtract 2, whatever. Now Kriegspiel requires referee (and 3 boards) to say whether a Chess move is legal, because you do not see opponent's moves. In Eleusis Chess, you do not even know the rules of play, hence the need for the referee here too. The preferred embodiment will have neither side knowing the Rules, say, each reviewing a notebook of one hundred alternatives with the same array agreed on, suppose RNBQKBNR 8x8. Make a move, and it may or not be legal. If illegal, the side forfeits the turn. For example, e2-e4 is declared illegal by the judge if the CV selected unbeknownst is Berolina Chess. Black's follow-up g8-f6 the referee also rejects if refinement shows the rules to be Berolina with Camels.
Why make a CV no one will ever play? Artistry, self-expression, craziness all three. Why did ancient man doodle in the sand? Hey, the world is geometric. Rats, fed in a corner, will rush to the corners in fresh surroundings. The Rat carries a map of her world and progresses to her next cage. Young pigeons practice homing to perfect it. They are better than you at it. They hear far better and do not even need visual markers the all-too-artificial human pieces below. On high they hear the sound of the Atlantic Ocean from a hundred kilometres away and return to Paris by sound towards absolute direction. They play the normal games, since species have superior and different senses. Ants zigzag away like Fantasy Grand's Priest, and metres away return to their hill in perfect straight line, knowing where it is and they are. Intelligence and the lacke of it, context and the lack of it. Judging by the naming of CV art, they represent futile yearning for simplicity/complexity, the wayward course. Dry leaves.
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One supposes ''Chess'' means King. Shah is King from Sanskrit. (Easterners may enlighten.) 'Shah' passed to Persian and to Arabic. No one reads Murray's 'History of Chess' (1913) for style, only content. Invented in India 600 CE, Chess spread and mediaeval Europe (9th, 10th Centuries) needed Latin words for the premier game. Most Chess writing was in Latin up to 1600, like scientific writing up to 1750. Latin scacus, scac, scacum (''a check''), all pluralized as Latin scaci for ''Chess,'' were thus late adaptations from Arabic. (Even today we Latinize words for scientific classification -- and on small scale, updates for at least one extant religion.) It became at the time for the game itself Italian scacchi, Middle French esches, Catalan scachs, English chess. Roughly, mainstream Europe had no ''sh'' aspirant then, so Arabic shah became ''sca - '', the closest equivalent. Mediaevil Latin scacus is also chess piece and not just King piece. Latin plural scaci being Chess itself, by year 1000 the other major Latin name for Chess is ludus scacorum, ''ludus'' as game. Chiefly, ludus scacorum became Chess. Well before Chess appeared, Classic Roman ludus latrunculorum was their singular game of skill. [Gary Gifford's Latrunculi is in fact late Middle Age rare alternate name for chess appearing in Murray as latinization. Latrunculi could not be Roman Latin because there was no Chess then. Gifford's account does not mislead, but several other 'Gifford CVs' feature classical Roman times. Roman L.L. was different board game with rules only conjectured.]