Ratings & Comments

erik I'll look into creating one.  I'm admittedly not too familiar with Game Courier.  At the moment, for online playing I've been using a "sandbox" environment without rule enforcement.  I'd be happy to work something out so we can play a game (or if necessary, even using a video stream of the board, with moves entered in the chat box or something).  If you find anyone on your end interested in playing over the board, I'd love to know how the game went (try to record it!)

The menu-generated links to Ratings should be updated to include `/play/`, but inserting that myself still doesn't seem to pass the game parameter to the rating script.  I can try to fix this later if no one else gets to it.

On the other hand, directly entering 'Chess' in the form produces what seem to be reasonable numbers...?

Hi Ben

Well, when I enter 'Chess' into the form, I get almost/all the names of people on the complete Ratings Page for Public Ratings, including some people having played well over 100 games (as would be also expected for the complete Ratings Page for Public Ratings). Presumably 'Chess' includes results for not just for standard Chess, but also e.g. Alice Chess (or any CV name with the word Chess in it).

I can get the Ratings for just standard Chess now. I was using the wildcard (%) before when using the filter on the GC Ratings Page itself, and that caused the problem of too many games & players showing up. Before now I had no idea of the significance of the (%) symbol, fwiw.

George sadly passed away many years ago, but his widow Angela Hodges is still selling the stuff at that e-mail address. Not sure if they also did Taikyoku Shogi, though.

What, in your opinion, makes it fun to play Tai Shogi? I have never actually played it, but it has always struck me as an extremely tedious variant. it has a royal that is so powerful there is really no hope to catch it short of completely exterminating its army first. And that contains hundreds of pieces. You can ask for a price list.

Looks like an interesting game, although I am not sure it qualifies as a chess variant. Could you explain the rules? They are not on a pubicly accessible website, in so far I could find.

[Edit] Oh, I found a description in a PDF file on Google Drive. Some things are not yet clear to me, though:

• It says the Pawn only moves one step. But is this only forward, or can it also move backward, when going to an empty square?
• It says the win is by taking or turning all enemy Castles. But Castles can also be destroyed by their owner, through splitting them up. Which is neither taking nor turning.) Is it illegal to split up your last Castle?
• What if I capture my opponent's last Castle by splitting up my own last Castle? Is this allowed? And if not, who would be at fault? Is it more forbidden to split up the last Castle, or more forbidden to move into its capture range?
• Does a promotion reset the 50-move counter?
• Does combining friendly pieces count as a turnover, for resetting the 50-move count?

I'm intrigued and it looks cool, but confused by the knight being a bishop + pawn.  I suppose so many things are breaking apart and coming back together that its value doesn't have to always match the sum of its parts.  Maybe the knights are used at opportunistic times only?  Shout out to Furgus Duniho for the very similar Fusion Chess, but I'll grant that this adds pawns into the mix (and I love how the openings play out), and I also like the visual simplicity of literally adding the rings together.

Indeed, the particular combinations of rings that you have at any moment is not really preserved for a long time, nor hard to improve when sub-optimal. Piece values only have meaning in more conventional chess games because you typically will be stuck with a piece for a very long time, possibly to the end of the game, and if you have a weaker piece there is not much you can do to trade it for something more valuable. Here the actual combination is more like a positional advantage. Temporarily having the Bishop lose its moves by combining it with a Pawn is similar to blocking a good diagonal for a Bishop with a Pawn in orthodox Chess. (The Bishop might keep some of its other moves in that case, but here the 'Pawn' will temporarily acquire Knight ability, which should provide even better compensation.)

Yet you probably would not strive for combining your own Bishops with a Pawn. But remember that you can also 'turnover' an enemy Bishop by merging it with your Pawn, and that would be extremely advantageous, as now it is the opponent that loses the Bishop, and won't get it back when you split them up again. It would in fact be pretty hard for him to get it back at all. So it is really the value of the individual rings that play the role of piece values here.

Fergus:

To help you spot the bug that is in our Colossus game here is part of the program:

Syntax Error on line 673

 658 MOVE: r i3-j3
 659 postauto2
 660 moveindex 146
 661 MOVE: B h1-j3
 662 postauto1
 663 moveindex 147
 664 MOVE: q g3-j3
 665 postauto2
 666 set posvar join "b" join fencode boardflags
 667 if >= var #posvar 3
 668   say Three Times Repetition! Drawn Game!
 669   drawn
 670 elseif sub stalemated #K
 671   if sub checked #K
 672     say Checkmate! Black has won!
 673     won:
else:
say Stalemate! The game is drawn.
 674     drawn
 675   endif
 676 elseif >= #nopvc 100
 677   say Fifty Moves Without Moving a Pawn or Capturing! Game Drawn!
 678   drawn
 679 elseif sub checked #K
 680   say Check!
 681 endif
 682 end

I understand the problem is the two points after the "won" word.

Ok, sounds good.  I will assign the games for round 2 on Saturday afternoon.

OK... Thanks!

Thanks. Good luck to everyone!

[I'm intrigued and it looks cool, but confused by the knight being a bishop + pawn.  I suppose so many things are breaking apart and coming back together that its value doesn't have to always match the sum of its parts.  Maybe the knights are used at opportunistic times only?  Shout out to Furgus Duniho for the very similar Fusion Chess, but I'll grant that this adds pawns into the mix (and I love how the openings play out), and I also like the visual simplicity of literally adding the rings together.]

Turnover, like chess, goes beyond a simple game, it has esoteric symbolisms. Castle made by 3 pieces has the symbolism of number 3. Keep board with 8x8 squares has the symbolism of number 7 and tetraktis 4+3+2+1 etc. Bishop is the magical or spiritual piece of chess, and it moves like a cross to bring a lot of other symbolisms that confirms the esoteric value of chess. Bishop + Pawn = knight because it is a man (pawn) with power (spiritual power from bishop), so in medieval battle, knights is it, a man mounted in a horse is much more stronger.

If you play the game, you will realise its difference on tactics, because you are sharing pieces with opponent. It create a kind of statu quo between pieces and it is really interesting. New players of course will play trash matches, but good turnover players can make passionate matches, and I swear, is really almost impossible to draw in Turnover, because this game is very offensive. So, yes, is very dangerous create knights, because bishops are very useful and when you move a knight you let behind a bishop and the opponent can think a strategy to take your bishop.

About simplicity, the game uses only 3 pieces, a magical number and a strong algorithm to the way human mind works. So when you are playing the game, seems all possible moves from all pieces on board can be visualized in your mind and it is good, because your mind can dedicate more time to think what move instead of recognize pieces first to think what move after. And your mind stress less then in chess.

Play Turnover: 

Player vs computer: https://glukkazan.github.io/checkmate/turnover.htm

Player vs player: https://glukkazan.github.io/checkmate/turnover-board.htm

Player vs computer (PawnFreeToCombine): https://glukkazan.github.io/checkmate/turnover-variant.htm

Player vs player (PawnFreeToCombine): https://glukkazan.github.io/checkmate/turnover-variant-board.htm

I agree that this looks interesting.

I've moved the discussion over from the homepage to comments here.  I've made the link description more descriptive, and corrected some of the categories (your choices were understandable, but most of them mean something different here; something we should clarify).  The formatting of this page should be cleaned up; I can do it later if you're not up to it.