Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Dear Editor,

I found an image of a Chinese chess variant
(http://www.hudong.com/versionview/idl,pAUWBxBWVKVEd2U,kVZZA) that I don't
recognize and wonder if you know what one it is.  I have searched on your
website but have found nothing similar.

From what I can see, the board has been lengthened by two ranks on each
side of the river, the extended range of the elephant inscribed on the
board, and the governor used for both sides as the royal piece in the
fortress; the generals (two per side) are positioned for a new function, it
seems, outside the fortress.

Thanks in advance for your help.

He can capture one of your pieces only if that remove check.

I found your comments very, uh -- interesting and sobering, and yet in my heart I believe I have a great idea; unfortunately no funding. I wont say much more but only ask that you look at what I have invented and patented, your most critical opinion would be most appriciated.

[email protected]  email
www.3dchesstower.com  web site

i hate it

Thanks Joe. I am just starting to get involved with people who invent games. Its a tough business from what I've seen and it doesn't seem that rewarding [ money wise ]. The biggest plus in my opinion is the inventors. Your quality and spark are a lighthouse in the fog. 
I am still interested in talking to Jeff and Mark from Zillions. Would you know how to contact them. I tried contacting them at the site but my email came back as failed.
You mentioned that there are some matters that would not be appropriate on this forum. My email is [email protected]. Please feel free to contact me at that address. Looking forward to hearing from you and thanks again for your help.

Hi, Tony:

Being involved in trying to get a small board game company off the ground myself, and just beginning to learn my way around the very bottom of the NY metro area game industry, I have to tell you I know that most efforts fail, and in particular, chess variants are a great way to fill your garage or basement with unsold merchandise. It is extremely difficult to make money with a chess variant. I've been involved with IAGO [Int'l Abstract Game Org] for a few years now, and have met or dealt with several people who had 'the next chess'. [None regulars on this site.] None of them have, or we'd know about it. 

Okay, that's the disclaimer, and it's all true. Please look into the industry before you invest. Given all that, I started by saying I am doing a small boardgame company, and have found out a few things. Yes, the hard way, or a hard way, certainly, in every case. I will lay out a few things for anyone who is interested, then ask you to email me, as anything more than I will say generally here would be outside the scope of this website. 

When you are making a board game, for an idea of cost, you need to be guided by the purpose of the board game(s) you are actually making. Are you prototyping, creating a small number for playtesting and advertising, or going whole hog, and making 5-10,000 games or more? And why are you doing it? What is your budget? Let me put that another way: how much can you afford to lose on this? Expect to lose [except secretly] and fight to win. They say determination is important. 

Let's look at those numbers of games another way. How will you manage to get all of those games sold/used? First, build the prototype. This you should do yourself, and the very first attempt should be paper and pencil. [This does include things like colored pens and stickers and game bits just lying around, unused, suffocating in their boxes...] It just needs to be good enough to show your buddy or brother or cousin, and get them to play some to test the concept. If they don't sink it, draw up around 3 of the very best but very minimalist boards you can, to the exact size you would want 10,000 of them done professionally. [This is often determined by packaging constraints.] Then put together about 5 sets of the best-looking pieces you can, and start playtesting in earnest. 

If initial playtesting goes very well, your next step might be to produce 25 or so semi-professional to professional-grade good-looking games. Get them out to game groups to play and get comments. Do demos and leave a game with contact info and questionnaires. Follow up within a month. Run contests/tournaments at places like cons and game stores or wherever your target audiences hang out. This gets all the bugs worked out and gives you some idea of how the public likes it. 

Assuming things go well, you want to do a small to very small production run, say 100-1000 games. There are boutique companies you can use, but they are expensive. At that level, you might have to do it yourself, or pay/go into partnership with someone who already has a small game company. You become your own distribution system, trying to sell your games at conventions and to game stores, and it isn't at all easy. What you're doing at this level is trying to make a name for yourself and draw some attention from an established company... who will pick up your game and sell it far better than you could, and you'll still probably only make pennies per game. But that doesn't happen all that often. 

All the cheap Chinese companies want to do minimum runs. The minimum sizes I saw were 5000-20,000 games. This is a largish run. How will you distribute these games? The big toy companies have contracts with thousands of stores to show their items, so when they make something, it is already going nationwide in stores. With advertising. Don't do this. Go back to 100 games. Make and sell those. Then either quit, change your methods, or make and sell another 100 or more. Your key to volume sales is distribution network, and that means hooking up with someone bigger, realistically. The games you produce have to be good enough to help that happen.

Prices? For the initial prototypes, under $10-20 dollars - plus travel costs to show it off. The 25 decent games would be maybe $200 - a few hundred. The 100 pro-looking games might go $2000 - a few thou. This all depends on size and components, and quality of components. These are roughly my costs for things from 1 to 100. After that, the Chinese are a few tens of thousands. Again, it depends heavily on components and quality.

Hi Joe
I wish to have a chess variant built for phone apps and a website. I came across chessvariants by trying to find contact info for mark lefler and jeff mallett. You seem to well versed in the production of chess games and I am wondering if you could help with contacting these guys or could give me some advice with regards to getting a board version manufactured.

How fast anything is posted depends entirely on when an editor with the necessary skills can get to it. Whether or not it gets posted at all depends on the content. 

As for the first condition, being an editor is voluntary. There aren't many of us still active, and I'm effectively the maintenance staff. Email me at the address you see on my info page [click on my name at left] and I'll see what I can do to help you. 

As for the second condition, content is to be 'G' rated, adequately presented, somehow remotely connected to chess, and if a game design, cannot have been done before. 

That's a brief run-down. You should follow the site links for specific information. Lol, that, or ask my son, is what I do! Joe

If you are a registered user you can submit chess variants using that form. Why don't you try.
/Mats

M Winther, read this: 'This form allows any person that has previously
submitted material that has been published on these pages, to post their
own pages'.
So, i can't use this yet.

You must publish it yourself, using this form:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/membersubmission.php
/Mats

You could not checkmate your opponent while leaving your own king in check.

Hi Admins,

A corrections for the What's New Page:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/whatsnew.php

For the week ending May 14, 2008 there are two Game Courier Presets entries for Modern Random Chess.

The one that says Author Jose Carrillo, Inventor Gabriel Maura, is actually for Modern Chess (not Modern Random Chess). The other one is OK.

A request: for the informational page for MRC64, can you add the text description 'Modern Random Chess 64' next to the link? (just like it was done for the MRC64 Game Courier Preset entry).

Thanks.

Admins,

Can someone please update the Query page on 'M' items below:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/mainquery.php?type=Any&startswithletter=M&orderby=LinkText&displayauthor=1&displayinventor=1

to include the Modern Random Chess Game Courier preset:
/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DModern+Random+Chess%26settings%3DMRC

Thanks.

Thanks David.

I did my first contributions, the Modern Random Chess variant:

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSmodernrandomch

and the new Bishop Adjustment Rule:

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSthebishopadjus

How does one become a Contributor to Chess Variants?

I have a new Bishop Adjustment Rule that I want to publish (next to Carlos Cetina's BCR rule), and I have 3 news variants that I've created that I also want to publish.

Great site but you shoud know that the piece you call Mao is actually Ma. 
Ma is the Chinese word for horse, not Mao which can mean cat, feather or
hair, rivet and thick or dense, depending on the tone.

We have linked to your nice site.

http://www.chessvariants.com/shogi.html

We hope you may link to our site.

If linked, please send mail to us, how to find it.

==================================================================

ƒRƒ“ƒsƒ…[ƒ^‚ð—˜—p‚µ‚½«Šû‚̐¢ŠE The Shogi World with Computer

ŠÇ—ŽÒ –Lãài‚Æ‚æ‚݂݁j webmaster: Toyomimi

[email protected] http://www.specjp.com

==================================================================

Comment posted 2005: any thoughts since?

Dear Hans and colleagues

I was having a game of XiangChi with another member of our club and
dropped by to see what might be new on your site;
I'm so impressed with all the effort you have put in on the content and
quality of this and other games since I was last here.  Keep up the good
work!

I was also vastly impressed with the neat comments system.  Is that
something you've devised yourselves, or a package that you've found
somewhere?  I was just about to sit down with some colleagues here and
try
to implement something similar for our own website at work
(www.sheu.org.uk), but would prefer not to re-invent the wheel if I can
avoid it.  Is the PHP coding something you can point me to, or are
prepared to share?

Thanks very much


Dave Regis

[email protected]

May your pieces harmonise with your Pawn structure and
your sacrifices be sound in all variations

D _
 / '()/~    Dave Regis         &8^D* Exeter Chess Coaching Page etc.:
|| \_/|    = DrDave on FICS   http://www.exeterchessclub.org.uk/
~\   /                      '...what else exists in the world but
chess?'
 _|||__SHEU                  -- NABOKOV    'Contribute!' -- Doug Attig

I would like to introduce you  wth a new chess variant and cannot!
here is the web site where you will find information : www.fortuit.fr
best regards to the whole team
Luc Queyrel : [email protected]

you are on the wrong page, you should read here
http://www.chessvariants.org/d.chess/chess.html

Alison:  No.  The first capture ends the move.  Your question could also be asked of Queens, Bishops, and Rooks
 for non-diagonal (orthogonal) captures)... and even Kings.  In all cases, the single-capture ends the move.

My question is:

Can a pawn capture two pawns if they are in a subsequent diagonal position. For example if there are 2 white pawns in 2 diagonal spaces can they be captured in one move with the black pawn moving 2 diagonal spaces in one go?

very creative,about hexagonal chess,i am too creative i made a new chess in
which dinnasour will  play a part, as well as  ,i designe a unique karom.in
this regard pl help me from where we can patent?
piyushdadriwala
[email protected]

The 50 move rule is a bit more than what was recently stated regarding pawn
movement.  The rule makes the game drawn, if

the last 50 consecutive moves have been made without the movement of any
pawn AND without the capture of any piece (or pawn).

Thus,when a piece is captured (or a pawn) the 50 move count must start all
over again.

There is no such 16 move rule. There is a 50 move rule, however, which says
that a pawn must be moved within 50 moves, otherwise the game is declared a
draw.
--Mats

We don't have an email list, per se, and if we did, we would need your
email address before we could put you on it. We do have a Yahoo!
discussion group, which you can sign up for yourself. You will find it at


http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/chessvariants/

If you're interested in participating in the various activities of this
site, such as voting in polls, playing games online, and discussing Chess
variants, you can follow this URL and become a registered user:

http://www.chessvariants.org/onthese/membership.html

My 'Victoria Principal' and i love spending quiet  evenings martinique
style in (jacuzzi), playing chess.
Great Site!
place me on email list
Adam Clore
7459 buffalo Ave
Niagara falls, New York 14304

I am not sure where to put this. My bookmark for the Gothic Chess comment
areas points to dead space. Anyway, here goes:

=============

The 2005 Gothic Chess Computer World Championship will be held online this
year at the http://www.GothicChessLive.com website. Everyone is invited to
watch, and if you have written a Gothic Chess program, participation is
free! We have one candidate from Iran this year, so we can neither charge
an entrance fee nor award any prize money in case this person enters
and/or wins (USA citizens cannot transaction any money with Cuba, Iran,
and a few other countries.) All participants will be mentioned in an
article appearing in the June 2006 issue of the International Computer
Games Association Journal.

The 2004 event was reported on at the Chessville.com website:

http://www.chessville.com/GothicChess/ComputerWorldChampionships.htm

For rules and registration, as well as playing times and login
information, visit:

http://s13.invisionfree.com/Gothic_Chess_Forum/index.php?act=SC&c=5

Come watch the best programs play for the title of the world's best!

The only thing related to 'reclaiming a queen' in Chess is the promotion
of a pawn to a queen.  For this to happen, the pawn must reach the final
row of the board, from its owner's perspective - in other words, get your
pawn all the way to the other side of the board, and you can promote it to
a queen.

(Additionally, the term 'reclaiming' is a bit inaccurate here, because
it is possible to get more than one queen by doing this multiple times.)

yes, it is a chess variant, called many names .. Also know as: Suicide
Chess, Losing Chess, Killer Chess, Take-all Chess, Giveaway Chess, Must
Capture Chess .. see here -->
http://www.chessvariants.org/diffobjective.dir/giveaway.html

Yeah I have a question.
My sister came home, she has joined the Chess 'Team' at her school
recently, and she told us of this version of Chess she calls 'TAke It'
where the object of the game is to make your oppenent take all of your
peices off the board.
She was rather vague in the rules and its making me a little nuts. I was
wondering if a. you have heard of such a version, b. what it is called?
and c. if perhaps you knew more what the rules where?

Thanks!:D

how do i make the pieces move with my computer

I have recently bought a game of Chinese Army Chess from the internet. It consists of 50 tiles 25 which are red and an equal number of black tiles. I have have a copy of the rules, but I have no clue what the Chinese symbols mean on the pieces. Do you know where I can get pictures of the pieces with identity explanation of the Chinese symbols so that I can figure out what the pieces are and be able to play a game? Thanks for your help. John