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Game Courier Tournament 2019. Chess Variant Tournament to be played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Jan 19, 2019 12:09 AM UTC:

Next Game Courier tournament announced.  Let me know what you think.

Please let other members know who might be interested but may not be actively watching the site if you are in communication with them.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Sat, Jan 19, 2019 02:19 PM UTC:

Think about what ?


💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Jan 19, 2019 02:42 PM UTC:

Anything.  I am trying to measure how much interest there is.


Carlos Cetina wrote on Sat, Jan 19, 2019 05:04 PM UTC:

Hello Greg.

Please sign me in at the event. Certainly Symmetric Chess is the variant that I would propose as my favorite.

Thanks for the organization!


Aurelian Florea wrote on Sat, Jan 19, 2019 06:46 PM UTC:

I'd play but I was thinking about choosing just a few games and have 3-4  separate tournaments of some of those games. Not that my  way is better :(!


A. M. DeWitt wrote on Sat, Jan 19, 2019 08:09 PM UTC:

I would love to be a part of this event. My favorite variants that are currently on the list are (in no particular order) Sac Chess, Colossus, Opulent Chess, Gross Chess, and Hectochess. Also, on a side note, I tend to not favor games that are not much like chess, escpecially if their rules are complicated like they are in Decima or if their presets don't contain full rule enforcement.


💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Jan 19, 2019 10:34 PM UTC:

Participants confirmed so far:

Greg Strong
Adam DeWitt
Carlos Cetina
Aurelian Florea


Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, Jan 20, 2019 08:53 AM UTC:

An important thing would be to have only enforcing displaying presets.

 


💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Jan 20, 2019 04:38 PM UTC:

We don't know which games will be included yet.  I do not want to exclude games that do not have a rule-enforcing preset at this time.  If games are picked that do not have them yet, I will see if one can be made.

 


💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Thu, Jan 24, 2019 02:02 PM UTC:

Thank you to those who have expressed interest, but the tournament is cancelled due to lack of interest.

I may try again in a few months to see if there is more interest.


Carlos Cetina wrote on Thu, Jan 24, 2019 03:19 PM UTC:

OK. No problem. Thanks.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Thu, Jan 24, 2019 05:03 PM UTC:

It's ok, not your fault Greg. I would have liked it though :)!


John Davis wrote on Thu, Jan 24, 2019 07:13 PM UTC:

I'm sorry to hear that, I'm always willing to be cannon fodder ;-).

But seriously, the last tournament gave me an idea of who plays at my level.

I was surprised that Shako or Metamachy wasn't picked for Cazaux's game since those are the ones on Jocly and in his book. And I realize that my game/games are not suitable for tournament play since mine purposely don't have rules enforcement, so they can be played with different rules.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Jan 24, 2019 09:03 PM UTC:

Isn't it too early to cancel the tournament from a lack of interest? I haven't even seen a call to sign up for it yet. At present, I have just been waiting for the final lineup of games to take shape.


💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Thu, Jan 24, 2019 11:27 PM UTC:

Ok, certainly willing to wait as it seems there is more interest, and perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear.  Anyone who is interested in playing, please post.  This is not an absolute commitment since I can't really stop anyone from changing their mind.  Also, as mentioned on the game page, there will be a verification email sent out to everyone before the tournament starts to make sure all participants are still interested, still available, aware the tournament is actually starting, etc.

Regarding game selection, waiting for the game list before throwing your hat in the ring creates a chicken-and-egg problem.  My plan is to have the would-be participants vote on the games from the list.  If someone is really unhappy with the results, they could always drop out.  As for changes to the list before voting, that is possible but there hasn't been much feedback until John's comment, which I will now address...

Regarding Cazaux's game, I skipped Shako because it had already been featured in a Game Courier tournament and I was giving preference to games that have not.  That said, if people want it changed, that's fine with me.  Metamachy doesn't appear to have a preset, rule-enforcing or otherwise, but it looks like a good game.  I should make at least a simple preset.  Final note on this, if Jean-Louis Cazaux himself weights in, he has the ultimate say on which of his games is used.

And, John, we can certainly add a game of yours.  I know I like Grand Betza, and there is an unpublished preset for it.  I can publish it if you like.  I know you have at least one other game, but if I've seen it I don't recall. As I've mentioned, rule-enforcement is NOT strictly necessary, but I will try to rule-enable any games we select if not too difficult.  Grand Betza would not be a problem except the Rhino might be a little tricky.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 12:26 AM UTC:

I'm interested. I was also thinking about going with Metamachy instead of Perfect 12. It seems to be a more recent evolution of Perfect 12. Perfect 12 does not appear in the "Chess Variants on very large boards" section of Cazaux's website, and that section begins with the statement "I consider that these variants are now surpassed by METAMACHY." So, I expect that he favors it over Perfect 12. Although he does not list it in his Favorites section, we have already done Shako as you mentioned, and the other two were for design contests with unusual board sizes. There is already a bare preset for this game, but I could make one that enforces the rules.


wdtr2 wrote on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 12:54 AM UTC:

I am interested in the tournament also.  Adding my two cents .... What about Shako-Balbo for a possible Variant?

 

 


💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 02:36 AM UTC:

Excellent.  Perfect 12 has been replaced with Metamachy.  Thank you both for the insight.  Although I certainly spent some significant time picking contributers and games, I knew there would be gaps.  I feel a little bad about picking representative games for other inventors, but for those that are no long active, I think it's better than just omitting them. Maybe gone, but certainly not forgotten ...

@wdtr2, yes, Shako-Balbo was already on the list.

Tentative player list:

Greg Strong
Adam DeWitt
Carlos Cetina
Aurelian Florea
Fergus Duniho
John Davis
wtdr2


Erik Lerouge wrote on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 07:55 AM UTC:

I had made a non rule-enforcing preset for Metamachy (https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DMetamachy%26settings%3Dmetamachy), but I don't know how to make for it to appear in the menu and the index.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 08:14 AM UTC:

@Greg,

As you had assumed I'm still in.

I think presets that are rules enforcing and move displaying should be mandatory mostly because otherwise how you would notice errors made by both players? There are other issues easier to spot. But these would fall on you as organizers and who else would like to help as an serious tournament should first and foremost be fair. Also I'd help with such error detection tasks but isn't that a conflict of interest?


Aurelian Florea wrote on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 08:14 AM UTC:

Also where that list of games can be found?


Omnia Nihilo wrote on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 09:13 AM UTC:

I'd be interested in joining up. And any game works for me. I don't even mind if there's no rule enforcing preset as long as the rules are available on the site or something.


Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 12:51 PM UTC:

might be able to play...

Since I cannot imagine anyone actually voting to play TessChess, maybe I'll put forward Tim's 3D Chess; it's 3D, so may tempt folks to try other 3+ dim games like Tess, it's not 4D itself, and it's a little slicker IMO than Raumschach with the two kings.  I should be able to adapt my Raumschach rules-enforcing preset for this, if someone can help me figure out how the two royal pieces should be done.  [If not, maybe I'll just pick another from my Favorites or Recognized.]

@Aurelian, the list of games is on this page we're commenting on.
I think if both players miss an illegal move, then that's still "fair"; however, it sounds like there are several people ready to work on rule enforcement on presets, so hopefully this will be moot anyway.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 03:35 PM UTC:

Ok!

I see :)!


💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 04:04 PM UTC:

RE: Rule-enforcing presets - I just don't see this as a big issue.  Games reasonably like chess will have rule enforcement.  For more radical games, even where rule-enforcing presets can be made, the chances that those will have bugs is significant.  There have been cases where games have been played many, many times before a bug in a preset has been found, but when it is discovered, the whole game comes to a halt until the creater of the preset can fix it.  I think the chances of time getting eaten off one's clock due to a preset bug is greater than the chances of both players failing to follow the rules.

We've had several tournaments here, often without rule-enforcing presets.  The only incident I know of is a game of Rococo where there was disagreement about what the rules actually were in an unusual case (the game description wasn't 100% clear.)  Rococo is fairly popular and still doesn't have a rule-enforcing preset.  It probably never will as I bet it would be shocking difficult to write.  I would not want to see Rococo forever excluded.

Of somewhat greater concern, though, is instances of strange movement/capture where you need to actually type the moves (Odin's Rune, I'm looking at you...)  But even this is something that we have lived with for a long time.  Gifford's Dimension X was played in Game Courier Tournament #3 and every turn had to be entered manually.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 04:13 PM UTC:

Ok, then!


Kevin Pacey wrote on Sun, Jan 27, 2019 08:41 AM UTC:

Rococo does have a rules-enforcing preset, which has been used many times. However I personally don't trust that it is currently bug-free, as I reported a log once where Francis lost a game to Carlos due to apparently not being allowed to play a legal move (Francis decided to resign at that point). Here's a link to the preset's page; note my comment (currently at the top) in the comments section, re: I reported the bug when I noticed the game that Francis had resigned, after I played over that plus other games of this variant:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/rococo.html

Around that time I reported a lot of what I suspected were bugs with other variant's presets, too, but I'm not sure if any of my reports were acted on, including the one in the link for Rococo.


Erik Lerouge wrote on Mon, Jan 28, 2019 10:13 PM UTC:

I might be interested to participate at the tournament.

Sorry to return to that, but would it possible to have shorter time settings? I recall that the 2017 tournament took 10 (!) months. (And there were also a few games where one player just stopped to play, instead of resigning, making the others wait for a long time until the game finished.) What I would like to suggest is to set a Max time (30 days for example seems good to me) without Grace time, so we could know the day when a round is finished at the latest, and the global duration of the tournament.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Jan 29, 2019 06:00 PM UTC:

Having grace time makes things fairer for people who normally move at different times. A day of grace time is good for assuring that differences in personal schedules do not cost some players more time than others. While we should do something to rein in the length of games, some games go on because of several moves. Limiting the total time of the game could unfairly hurt the player whose turn happens to run up against such a time limit. The maxtime value is used to limit the total time a player may have between turns. It does not limit the total time for the game. This could put a cap on how much extratime and bonustime could increase someone's total time. Setting this to 30 days would mean that no player could take more than 30 days between turns. I would suggest setting it to 28 days, which is twice the initial spare time. If we want to be a bit stricter, we could set it to 14 days, which matches the spare time. This would allow someone who is behind on time to gain some back by making moves, but it would not allow anyone to gain more time than the initial 14 days of sparetime.


Erik Lerouge wrote on Wed, Jan 30, 2019 06:43 PM UTC:

OK, what you propose is certainly more suited for correspondence play. I was just wondering how the duration of the tournament could be reduced.

Finally I've decided not to participate in the tournament. Good luck to all!


John Davis wrote on Thu, Feb 7, 2019 04:18 PM UTC:

Thank you Greg, the short answer is I prefer your array, Grand Betza Stong. The long answer. After my game of Chess on a Really Big Board with Georg Spengler, we both decided that the Rose was a horrible piece. Then I was mortified to find that our game is still on the Wikipedia page for CoaRBB. The Rhino is also mentioned in the article for the game and I wanted to try playing with that piece. With the Rhino being a slider, I hoped it would be less obnoxious then the Nightrider and a full major piece . I also wanted to play with the Phoenix and Kirin, and the number of pieces suggested a 10x10 board for a good piece density. This was my first attempt at an array from scratch and the Grand Betza array seems to favor white to much. If you don't wish to have your name attached to it, I'm ok, but I much prefer your array and would like to have it as the official array for a published preset under either Grand Betza or Grand Betza Strong, your choice. 


Kevin Pacey wrote on Mon, Feb 11, 2019 06:10 PM UTC:

I'm willing to play in this 2019 GC tournament. I'm happy with my Sac Chess variant invention being proposed for inclusion in the tournament.

Note that my email address is still found on my CVP personal info page; however, it's been a long time since I've been sent automated messages, e.g. reminding me whenever it is my turn to move in a game (to tell the truth, I don't miss the clutter in my email inbox that that causes).


Aurelian Florea wrote on Tue, Feb 12, 2019 12:11 PM UTC:

About the tournament containing my game I'd like to retreat it for now as I had anyway improved the rules and not completed the new preset. Is that fine guys?


Aurelian Florea wrote on Tue, Feb 12, 2019 12:20 PM UTC:

I'm stil playing that has not changed :)!


💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Feb 16, 2019 08:06 PM UTC:

Ok, I have set the Max Time to 4 weeks and removed Apothecary as requested.  It looks like we might have around 8 players.  For anyone interested in playing, please rate each of these games with a value between 0 and 4.  Use 0 for a game you really, really don't want to play and a 4 for a game you really do want to play.  There are no limits - you could rate everything a 4 if you wanted to, but doing so would not accomplish anything.  Basically I'm going to total up the points for each game.  I will try not to include any games that have been given a 0, so if two games are very close in score, I may pick the lower rated one if it received no 0 ratings while the other one did.  So please use the 0 rating sparingly as that is basically a veto (unless lots of games get zeros.)

 

InventorGame
Jose CarrilloCourier Chess Moderno
Jean-Louis CazauxMetamachy
Carlos CetinaSymmetric Chess
Charles DanielColossus
Adam DeWittHectochess
George DukeFalcon Chess
Fergus DunihoGross Chess
Gary GiffordOdin's Rune Chess
Joe JoyceGrand Shatranj D
Jorg KnappenJanus Kamil Chess
Vitya MakovMaorider Chess
H. G. MullerElven Chess
Michael NelsonDecima
Kevin PaceySac Chess
David PaulowichUnicorn Great Chess
Tony QuintanillaHeroes Hexagonal Chess (v2)
Ben ReinigerTessChess
Greg StrongOpulent Chess
wdtr2Shako_Balbo

Please send me your ratings by email: [email protected]

 


Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, Feb 17, 2019 04:11 AM UTC:

Thanks Greg,

For me:

Courier Chess Moderno 2;

Metamachy 4;

Symetric Chess 3;

Collosus 2;

Hectochess: 3;

Falcon Chess 4;

Gross chess 4;

Odin's rune chess 1;

Grand Shatranj D 2;

Janus Kamil Chess 3;

Maorider Chess 4;

Elven Chess 3;

Decima 4;

Sac Chess 1;

Unicorn Great Chess 3;

Heroes Hexagonal chess 1;

Tess Chess 1;

Opulent chess 4;

Shako Balbo 4;


💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Feb 17, 2019 05:02 PM UTC:

Thanks.  And your rating for Hectochess?


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