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Falcon Chess. Game on an 8x10 board with a new piece: The Falcon. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jul 10, 2008 04:08 PM UTC:H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jul 10, 2008 08:34 AM UTC:The first 100 games (at 40/1 min Time Control), with Falcons replacing the Rooks on a1/a8 and j1/j8 in the Capablanca setup (RNABQKBCNR) of one player, ended in a 56.5% victory for the Falcons. This is about half as much advantage as a full Pawn would give (so 1/4 Pawn per Falcon). Overnight I ran another match at 40/2 min TC, starting from the array RNBFQKFBNR, deleting Falcons of one side and Rooks for the other. So no A or C on the board here, just two empty squares on the back rank. (The setup with RNFB seemed unplayable, due to the undefended b- and i-Pawns, which where too easy targets for the side with the Falcons.) This ended in 54.5% (102 games) for the Falcons. From watching some of the games I got the impression that d1/g1 are much better starting positions for the Falcons than a1/j1; the Falcons were involved in play quite early, and very active. Starting on a1/j1 they were often not touched until the late middle-game. There was no castling with Falcons, and they usually came into play only after evacuating the back rank, and playing Fa1-d2 or Fj1-g2. From seeing the Falcon in action I have to retract my earlier coined names for it: the way it moves creates the overwhelming impression of a snake! It slithers in between the other pieces to its destination, where it bites with deadly precision. Best name for it would be something like Cobra or Viper. As the WinBoard_F GUI currently does not support the Falcon piece, and has no bird-like piece symbols, I use its feature of the 'wildcard piece' (which is allowed to make any move) for representing the Falcon. The standard bitmap symbol for this in WinBoard is the Lance (but of course WinBoard offers the possibility for the user to define its own piece symbols through font-based rendering). On second thought I was not too unhappy with this symbolism either; it also recalls the image of a weapon that is difficult to use in dense crowds, but which can be dangerous at a substantial range if you manage to poke it through holes in the crowd. I also ran some tests where I played K+F vs K+R, each behind a closed rank of 10 Pawns. I played those at somewhat longer time control, so I don't have enough games to get reliable statistics. But from watching these end-games, I got the impression that the Falcon and Rook are also well matched here. It seemed to me the Rook was more dangerous for developed Pawn structures, especially with Pawns on both wings, by attacking them from the 7th rank, while the Falcon was more dangerous to undeveloped Pawn chains (as I started out with). So often the Falcon managed to win one or two Pawns before a secure Pawn chain could be constructed, and before the Rook could launch a counter attack through the resulting openings, but then the latter often had no difficulty to recoup the damage.
Communicating e-mails to Greg Strong fall 2006, I had Falcon declining in value already then, based on how many pieces on board to 5.0, equality with Rook, only by 15 pieces/Pawns remaining(the programming criterion I suggested), more or less evenly between both sides. So Mueller and I would be in some agreement from our heuristics. I'll get the exact table soon that I sent to Strong, no longer considered trade secret, since Muller or others no doubt will eventually refine them further, the slight gradual decline in value of Falcon from all 40 pieces on board. Thanks for presentations on Falcon-Bison. Rightly M/ points out Falcon-Bison equivalence once 3, or usually 4 and 5 in most positions, units remain. Think of irony that ancient games like Timur's, Courier, Gala, will have their endgames solved by 2020, 500 or 700 years later, while new ones Centennial, Jacks & Witches, Falcon, and a hundred others, we can have full set of end-game tables way before any understanding of openings. The exact reverse of cases.
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Jul 9, 2008 08:08 PM UTC:Because I am still struggling to implement the Falcon in Joker80, where efficiency is a hallmark, I decided to add a few lines of code to Fairy-Max to implement support for multi-path moves. Fairy-Max is inefficient anyway, and does not know about pins and check tests; it simply plays on until the King is captured. So it is possible now to define pieces like Falcon in Fairy-Max (in this as yet unreleased version), so that I could already start running some games for asymmetric play testing. The initial results suggest that a Falcon is not worth nearly as much as mensioned somewhere below. As the Falcon seems a piece similar to the Rook, initially hard to use on a crowded board, but reaching its full potential as the board gets empty, I decided to test it against Rooks. So I took a Capablanca setup, and replaced both Rooks of one side by Falcons. If the Falcon would be really worth 6.5, against a Rook 5, this would mean the Falcon player is leading by 3 Pawns from the outset. Such 'piece odds' games normally produce 80-90% scores. (Simple Pawn odds results in 62% for Capablanca Chess with Fairy-Max.) The setup seem to be completely balanced, however. Currently it is at 39.5-37.5 for the Falcons, far below the level of significance for determining which piece is better (Rook or Falcon), but almost ruling out completely that the Falcons convey a +3 advantage. I would currently be inclined to value the Falcon a quarter Pawn above the Rook.
H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Jul 6, 2008 11:37 PM UTC:After converting my tablebase generator to bigger boards, I can now confirm that the Bison (and thus Falcon) + King can always mate a bare King even on 14x14 (takes 82 moves, worst case). But not on 16x16. I can only do even boards, so 15x15 remains uncertain.
H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Jul 5, 2008 11:21 PM UTC:This Falcon is a very nasy piece to program. The multi-path character of its moves subverts all properties of pinned pieces on which my engine Joker relies for efficient legal-move generation. There is no longer a well-defined pin line: pieces pinned by a Falcon can often move in multiple directions without exposing the King. Also it is no longer sure that a pinned slider cannot move along its pin line to block a check by another piece (if this other piece is a Falcon). A check by a Falcon can have the character of a contact check (for interposing is not an option if the King is checked through multiple paths) despite being inflicted from a distance. I guess I will simply generate moves as if the enemy Falcons have no moves, (so generating pseudo-legal moves with pieces pinned by a Falcon, and with other pieces when in check by a Falcon), and then test for their legality afterwards (by testinng if an enemy Falcon happened to be aligned with our King, and then testing all the generated moves for leading to a position where this Falcon is sufficiently blocked). Cumbersome, but I don't see an efficient alternative.
The third section of article will not be used at all as is, of course, having served as attention-getter. Muller is first to find force of Falcon to corner to win, that Paulowitz and I questioned. Glad you find the Paulowitz example and my response. That's good, that Falcon wins, like Rook. No one programmed play of Falcon yet, so great, that we keep Falcon on par with Rook to the end, about which I was uncertain. //The first over-the-board play of Falcon was between Vera Cole and myself December 1992, and the same month another lady and gentleman became players. By 1994 still only two dozen had tried the Falcon move on 8x10, each signing non-disclosure agreement. I doubt whether more than 200 games were played in 1990's, but I experimented with board positions for the Mates in Two here. About 2000-2003 we played a lot in coffee shops, still no computer play. Games were usually decisive well before endgames. Once the board was deliberately angrily forcily overturned and all the pieces struck and strewn around a Denver, Colorado, cafe by Mladen, born at Yugoslavia, I believe Slovenia, when I checkmated with Falcon. The only ''computer play'' is human-human at Game Courier 2003-2008.
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jul 3, 2008 10:44 AM UTC:Oh, and since there is no e-mail address in my profile on this discussion board, for people that want to contact me privately: I can be reached with user name h.g.muller, with provider hccnet. nl
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jul 3, 2008 10:25 AM UTC:George Duke: | Right, that paragraph could be improved, let's see. That was written | in late 1996, when copyright mailed in USA, and not revised for the | CVP 2000 article. If one King and Falcon stand on own back rank, | and other King at its bank rank, with no other pieces on board, no | checkmate is possible with good play. I did some more tests using a converted Joker80 engine, and it seems that on a 10x8 board this statement is plain wrong. Joker has no difficulty at all in checkmating a bare King with King + Falcon, even if they all start from their own backrank (or even if the bare King can start in the center). Even if I let the defending side search 100x longer, making it search ~10 ply deeper, so that it sees the mate coming long before the winning side does, and would avoid it if possible. David Paulowich: | Falcon Chess has the opposite problem: I have not seen anyone state | that King and Falcon can force a lone King into a corner. OK, so I am the first then. ;-) Even an engine with a comparatively shallow search has no problems driving a bare King into a corner with King + Falcon, as long as it knows that it is bad for a bare King to be closer to a corner. Even if the defending side enormously outsearches it. This applies to 8x8 boards (where there is ironclad proof through an end-game tablebase) as well as 10x8 (where it is based on time-odds play testing). This page really need thorough revision. Apart from poor presentation, some of the statements in it are just plain false, or very unlikely to be true at least...
Suppose Rook is just unlimited-range orthogonal piece that can be blocked. What is most important is that there is one complement to RNB, dictating them, from which Rook, Knight, and Bishop derive, not vice versa. Coincidentally, ''Octopus'' is already-used and mentioned acceptable alternate name for the three-way three-path piece and is still okay too. Also Phoenix, Horus, Scorpion or other names. Muller's name for Centaur(BN) of Dancer would also aptly fit Falcon. The game is not so much ''Falcon Chess'' as ''Chess.'' Falcon and Octopus both look like Figure 19. Poetic reasons, Falcon now prevails, because of Sun(F) Falcon, Moon(P) Sheep, Mars (N) Horse, Mercury(B) Elephant, Jupiter(K) Lion, Venus (Queen) Hawk, Saturn(R) Serpent. See the tables at ChessboardMath that extend in from 2x7 or 3x7 to as many as 7x7 natural and cultural associations, the star cluster Pleiades seven, days of Week, Birds, Animals, Metals -- all lists of seven items matched with the seven natural Chess pieces. Mythological associations often resonate dually, so imagination connects easily Falcon and Octopus, as in Figure 19, movement patterns showing either tentacles or wings spread. [My 19.February,2008 Comment at Chessboard Math has many natural sevens(7's) including ''Falcon.'' ]
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Jul 2, 2008 03:39 PM UTC:Why do you call this piece a Falcon, btw? A falcon is a flying creature, which makes it a very illogical name for a piece that can be blocked from reaching its destination by ground-based troops! Octopus would have been a more apt name, as the piece seems to have distinct tentacles that can slither through openings in the crowd, to attack what is at the other side. With a bit of imagination (considering neighboring (3,1) and (3,2) as one waving tentacle tip) there are even eight!
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Jun 30, 2008 06:12 PM UTC:| 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. OK, I will see what I can do. I will let you know as soon as I made something, and send it to you privately, so that you can judge if it meats your standards.
I also need to talk to Muller privately. - Sam
Thanks again for interest. We'll find a way to contact privately. I recommend to get on Game Courier, Muller, the Play system here. Nothing to it. You may be just the candidate to develop this worldwide. Let's discuss it privately anytime after you study it some weeks, and get your understanding up. You would not expect to learn a programming language in one sit-down. Take your time for something more important than Fortran or C++. (Only half-kidding, but I cannot spell out policy in rough atmosphere.) And at Game Courier, Muller, you can get the upper hand among prospective programmers. Thanks again. -- Barring that, Muller, let me look at Joker or whatever engine and respond later.
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Jun 27, 2008 10:57 PM UTC:You talk a lot, but you say very little. I have no idea what Game Courier is, and I see no reason why anything that should be said between us cannot be said here. If you see this CV-page as advertizement for your patented game, you would do well to declare your licensing policy here. That would be much more useful than describing the excruciating detail, and boasting how many variants the patent covers. The latter just scares people away from the variant. But you made it clear you don't want me to make an engine to play your game. Well, so be it. There are plenty of other variants that are not patented. Even the patented UNSPEAKABLE variant does allow me to implement the game in an engine. But if you want to use your patent to prevent anyone can play the game, it is up to you... I am not sure what better place there could be to discuss the KFaK end-game than here, or why the mating potential of a piece that (due to the patent) can only occur in this variant would be 'of lesser interest'. What do you think the CV pages are for, really? To talk about Chess, or to talk about patents????
Hopefully, Falcon topic will be talked out for rest of summer soon. I told Jeremy Good 1 1/2 years ago Falcon in CVPage is ''a lost cause,'' because of differing values, or CVPage refusal to evaluate at all objectively. It is interesting Charles Daniel dislikes Falcon. Fine. It grows on you. Gradually you realize Falcon is correct, and your piece is incorrect. It takes a while. Stephen Stockman, as excellent a player as Daniel, dislikes Falcon too. They do not ruffle any feathers, and you will see no effect on our(my) ongoing topics. Compare qualities of Comments and Rating evaluations sometime, or get an impartial outsider to do so. I think we do a good job. Stockman calls, in keeping with CVPage-inspired etiquette, vehemently Falcon ''a stupid piece,'' when I beat him. That is his thank you for the game played. Hey, it was already becoming competitive ambiance. See completed log of Duke-Stockman. Now ask Fourrier or Carlos or Good about Falcon play. Their expected public silence is understandable, in face of perennial Internet problem of lowering standards and belligerence when a Comment system is open to all, but WE happen to know what THEY think.
Nah. I am not answering these fully in atmospheres of hostility. Of course there are grey areas. Please do not use Falcon at Joker or anywhere else without talking to us. All you have to do is enter Game Courier, get emails and start conversation. There are individuals, friends and associates there I email five years running, such as Lavieri. (In those days there were no Ratings. Ratings have become another farce, because one person might play in 30 seconds, whilst Fourriere says sometimes he takes 30 minutes a move.) Falcon's ''91.5 Trillion...'' has on the order of 10^50 different Rules sets, all inclusively patented. Most emphasize no Queen promotion: Daniel and Carlos are playing now with Queen promotion. Incidentally, the possibility of promotion to Falcon always differentiates from OrthoChess, regardless whether Falcons get captured early. Daniel has been playing well and removed Falcons in Carlos game, reverting to OrthoChess strategy. The library of OrthoChess goes to tens of thousands of volumes. My brief comments cover 0.00001% at most of the broad topic of fully-realized Chess with all four potential compounds, Falcon included. Hey, thanks for interest, Muller. And still very seriously, drop posturing and please discuss specifics of endgames etc. of less general interest elsewhere sometime as suggested. // Charles, I got cut off from Computer to correct details of last Comment including 'I's and do so now. The 'We' refers to Falcon partners in Colorado USA when that applies. Keep on laughing within your laughable games whilst the faces on the horizon are not even smiling.
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Jun 27, 2008 09:08 PM UTC:Incredible! After four posts of extremely verbose and incoherent ranting you managed to address exactly zero of my questions / issues. So let me repeat the most important ones: 1) Am I allowed to include Falcon Chess as a variant that Joker80 can play, and offer it for free download? 2) To which pieces can a Pawn promote in this game? 3) Does, according to you, a single Falcon have mating potential against a bare King on a 10x8 board? And on 8x8? Note that the fact that this page is a copy of a patent application, which by necessity has to be elaborate, is in no way an excuse. No one forces you to publish the full patent application here. In fact patent applications are utterly unsuitable as contents on chessvariants.com. They are meant for lawyers.
Most Falcon Chess arrays protect all Pawns. We thought back in 2000 or 2001 that surely by 2008, we would have constructive feedback whether to diverge from natural-seeming RNBFQKFBNR, unusual for unprotected Pawns. With departure of Abdul-Rahman Sibahi and Jeremy Good, those ruminations are at standstill. Anyone seeing the need for essentially one Chess, not a wide variety, and the natural evolution of Falcon from RNB basis, is welcome to get emails through Game Courier to inquire. Just post a Falcon Preset sometime and we will watch to accept it. So-called royalties would be out of the question until there is fee membership or other material for sale. My partners told me to add the last part, more or less.
Editor Quintanilla tags an 'Excellent' on Falcon in 2007, after Jeremy Good asked, because of both having played it. Thanks, Tony. Suppose even Editor Aronson refused to Rate Falcon on Jeremy Good's request, after Aronson calls Falcon *COMPLEMENT* of Rook, Knight, and Bishop in Complete Permutation Chess. That's okay, because Peter Aronson himself has not received due for CPC yet either. Incredible that there could be a mathematical complement, carrying characteristics of all of them! (We have to be cheerleaders without Good anymore) The problem comes from improper insruction of OrthoChess. Kids are not taught that Rook, Knight, and Bishop mutually complement each other. What does such mathematical concept mean here? Briefly, mutually exclusive squares, mutually interacting different moves, and completion of the field. Yet revolt against existence of that attribute is understandable when people and players have stake in hiding the underlying coherence. The reason arises from Chess' not being pure Science but also Art, Sport, and Life pastime, including all the material aspect. When I personally handed Yasser Seirawan Falcon material October 1998 at Denver national championship, I saw looks after some GMs looked it over of bemusement and scepticism, but none of the selfish scorn to be read intuitively across these impersonal electronics. I wonder what Seraiwan thinks today about Chess reform: don't put much stock in Seraiwan Chess itself, about which they are not really serious.
Suppose Damiel's '***' is an expletive, which is not surprising given CVPage standards vis-a-vis Falcon for one. Daniel's Titan Chess is so embarrassingly terrible, I stopped perusing its Rules and let time run out at recent GC game. I actually joined their potluck tournament, and was subjected to Titan (follow-up critique there later) because my name alone was mentioned for invitee and politely accepted. How to continue constructive discussion of what GM and World Champion Emanuel Lasker calls ''Reform in Chess'' in article 90 years ago? Sometimes one piece makes all the difference. In fact, usually so, Chess being so nuanced. When they add Modern Queen (RB) around 1500, somehow Centaur(BN) or Champion(RN) just would not have done. Those two were named by Carrera 100 years later, but surely mediaeval ingenuity could conceive them and rejected them, in favour of our Queen. Now Pritchard says in 'ECV' Intro that OrthoChess with (RN) might have worked just as well. Most would disagree, so indeed there are schools of thought, and the Queen won out, becoming essential. Likewise, used in one or two Problems in obscure publication in 1970's, Bison (leaper 1,3 plus 2,3) is so inherently flawed, ruining Knights and Pawns, as never to have been put into a CV. Then Falcon Chess, seeing some potential, in December 1992 reduces the same-destination theoretical construct to practice in perfected form, no longer the ridiculous problem-theme leaper. Please remember the Patent started with Inventor's notebook, each page cosigned from 1992. Are we to continue to be lampooned for taking steps nearly 20 years ago? It just shows the widespread ignorance of those belligerent opponents of intellectual property protection. Actually, the first precedent for Falcon, co-equal with Bishop, Knight, and Rook, exists long ago in mediaeval German Gala -- for another Comment. // Now most Patents are not complex Rube Goldberg contrivances (see cartoons), but slight key alterations of prior art with inventiveness. An important field will have Patents themselves not that different from one another. The only difference might be in molarity or degree of heating or cooling or one or two genes varying in biochemistry.
This article is written for several perusals and assumes increasing degrees of familiarity for the importance of the topic, the total reformulation of Chess to its full, correct embodiment. We doubt Muller can even state, or visualize -- at present early stage for him, evidently, from his limited expressed understanding -- that there are 12 movement patterns or that there are always three-fold ways. Another 'Poor' will not knock us down a peg for our other contributions, since we reject the general values here. This first Comment may be followed up by another even weeks later on topic already covered by doing full research of available information. Patenting requires extensive specifics, hence the broad wording in article, carried over from Patent write-ups. No doubt we are partly at fault for not yet giving Jeremy Good request for elementary Rules-set. Evidently, most do not even understand the move with this style, judging by GC games played, and my often having to correct play (except for example Fourriere and Carlos who caught on). Falcon Chess has far and away the most 'Poor's of any CV, bar none. It continues from Editor Cazaux (any Editor may not have rated Poor anywhere else), to 'Fischer', to Nalls, to Gifford, now to Muller, and several others. How can there be any respect on our part when it is obvious Falcon is ''the missing piece,'' every other piece is not such, and the Ratings are the worst of any other. Constructively, the 'Poor's help us winnow out those we will not cooperate with in future reductions to practice. For example, we shall never sanction any Zillions application or association, no exceptions. When Zillions came on board about 2000, CVPage values plummetted. This particular article is almost exact copy of the first Copyright mailed to USA office, happening to be 1996, the same year Patent Application also was sent in. Sorry, it does not meet the formulaic worn descriptions we get the last ten years under CVPage auspices that we refuse to participate in. Editor Aronson calls Falcon ''the complement'' of Bishop, Knight, Rook. Simple as that. Editor Good calls Falcon ''the greatest innovation in Chess to come along in four hundred years....'' (Comment 17.7.2007 later revised to ''one of the gr...'') We may, or may not, get to patenting questions in follow-up that common courtesy would ordinarily require to answer. Since there is taboo to say anything good about my invention, more likely I shall continue role as analyst predominantly, contemptuous of the prevailing ethos. We are more interested, as usual, in wide evaluation and critique of others' work, in order to be fully competent later to thwart, or prosecute, any copycats of Falcon use. There are other Patents in works than USP5690334 and copyrights as intellectual property covering it. Any infringement or plagiarism will be held to account, whereever it occurs. Until there is some acceptance of evolutionary specifics in Chess, and desire to see it take place, the Falcon team response is duly limited like this.
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Jun 27, 2008 01:27 PM UTC:On a more chessic note: Why are you saying the Falcon does not have mating potential? I ran a tablebase for the Bison (a non-lame (1,3)+(2,3) compound leaper), and the KBiK ending on 8x8 is generally won (100.00% with wtm, 80% with btm including King captures, longest mate 27 moves). I think it should make no difference that the Falcon, unlike the Bison, is lame: to block any Falcon move, at least 2 obstacles are needed, and this is very unlikely to ever occur with only two other pieces (the Kings) on the board. In the mating sequence I looked at, the Bison is mainly shutting in the bare King from open space, the attacking King closing off another direction. I also cannot imagine that expanding the board size from 8x8 to 10x8 would make any difference. Usually it is the narrowest dimension that counts. So I really think King+Falcon vs King is a totally won end-game on 10x8, although I could not exactly say in how many moves.
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Jun 27, 2008 10:19 AM UTC:Poor ★I think this page does a very poor job in describing Falcon Chess compared to the compact description other CVs get on these pages. And this for addition of only a single new piece, for which the move rules could have been described (within the context of what can be supposed common background knowledge for visitors of these pages) with the in a single sentence: 'The Falcon is a lame (1,3)+(2,3) compound leaper, which follows any of the three shortest paths to its desination consisting of orthogonal and diagonal steps, which can be blocked on any square it has to pass over to reach its destination.' That, plus possibly a diagram of the Falcon moves and a diagram of the array should have been sufficient. As it is now, I could not even find the rules for promotion amongst the landslide of superfluous description. Note that my rating only applies to the page, not to the game. I haven't formed an opinion on that yet, it could be the greatest game in the World for all I know. I have a question, though: What exactly does the patent cover? As a layman in the field of law, I associate patents with material object which I cannot manufacture and sell without a license. Rules for a Chess variant are not objects, though. So which of the following actions would be considered infringements on the Falcon patent, if performed without licensing: 1) I play a game of Falcon Chess at home 2) I publish on the internet the PGN of a Falcon Chess game I played at home 3) I write a computer program that plays Falcon Chess, and let it play in my home 4) I publish on the internet the games this program played 5) I conduct a Falcon Chess tournament with this engine in various incarnations as participant, and make it available for life viewing on the internet 6) I post my Falcon-Chess capable engine for free download on my website 7) I post the source code of that engine for free download on my website 8) I sell the engine as an executable file 9) I sell a staunton-style piece set with 10 Pawns, orthodox Chess men, and two additional, bird-like pieces 10) I sell a set of small wooden statues, looking like owls, falcons, elephants and lions, plus some staunton-style pawns, plus a 10x8 board. ????????? And more specifically: would it require a license to equip my engine Joker80 to play Falcon Chess (next to Janus, Capablanca and CRC) and post it on the internet for free download? If so, could such a license be granted, and what would be the conditions?
Pardon the plug Mr. Duke, but I want to say your Falcon is welcome in IAGO Chess, if you want to play around with it there.
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