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George Duke wrote:
I always thought it fishy Betza left July 2003 the very month Game Courier went up.
That is the time period in which Game Courier got its present name and received a major overhaul, but Game Courier did not spring ex nihilo in 2003. It grew out of a PBM system I began developing and using here in 2001.
When and how to continue tackling Gilman more fully? We worked 1/4 the way publicly through Man & Beasts so far and have to finish them. The irony is that the generic Gilman CV is the superior game to play than typical Betza and therefore most others, while few Gilmans yet appear at Game Courier or other server. Now Betza after year 2000 is mostly entertainment, face it. Almost every CVPage-sponsored Betza during this ending decade, Betza himself says approximately: ''I've not played it,'' or ''It may be playable.'' Or even words to the effect ''It's not a good CV to play'' right there in the text. What an argument for proliferation! Whereas I find Gilman has actually worked through the kinks better than recent Betzas. Chess Different Armies, Avalanche, and earlier Betzas are in their own league, not being referred to now. Partly because Gilman is 'x' many decades younger than Betza accounts for the difference in style of production within this closing one and only decade of proliferaton. I always thought it fishy Betza left July 2003 the very month Game Courier went up. Betza in his early 60s probably had lost some his playing skills after sounding off on them. Pride goeth before the fall. http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=17077 http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=21699 Let's start with one little triumph of understanding, our analysis before of Irwell linked above and below too in these regular non-thread comments.
Charles Gilman has some very good material. That is the dilemma of proliferation. Look at the mechanism of Princess piece in Irwell. My first comment here analyses it 1 1/2 years ago, and since Gilman clarifies my partial misunderstanding. Unusual Princess changes sides upon crossing the river. I started to give prolificists an over-all rating for their 15 or 30 or 150 (Betza) or now 180 (Gilman). With Good 6.0 to 7.9 and so on, I had Gilman around 6.3 with only Gifford and Lavieri (Roberto with 22 CVs is indeed also prolific by definition) definitely higher around 6.8, all excluding Betza (offhand estimate 7.3 with high entertainment value); but I never got to everyone. It is very hard to sustain over 6.0 out of 10.0 over many, many CVs. Gilman has a few such as AltOrthHex, worth 9.9, to raise his average. And Gilman generally meets our criteria, preconceptions for good work, of appreciating others' past efforts with citations, thus understanding the milieu of the units or mutators he employs. Keep producing, Charles, as artwork unlikely to be played. Actually, though I am well familiar with 40 or 60 ''Gilmans,'' more than anyone else than himself, percentagewise that is still lower than most CV-prolificists, that I know inside-out over 50% of their products, or even 100% in cases like Lavieri, Aronson, Betza (in spite of nearly 200 articles latterly). These precise numbered ratings, occasionally appearing, are within different conceptual structure than scattered courtesy 'Excellents' adhering rather to CVP loose acceptance standards. On full treatment an 'E' there may turn out to be only 6.5 within a developed comment or mathematical design analysis. My first comment says 8.0 out of 10.0 for Irwell, right on the G-E cusp. A generic 'Good', first approximation, may become Average to Excellent 5.0 to 9.0 once thought through, for the run-of-the-mill, the artwork, or the Track One candidate alike.
After noting tha tthe comment below highlights an ambiguity I have clarified what happens when a Princess crosses the River - it switches from being movable by one player in the team to being movable by the other player in the same team.
Rating: 8 out of possible 10. Background for 4-player Partnership Mitregi. Having at hand pages 1 & 2 through 'Pieces' only, no Rules page 3, we interpolate as needed. Rules being theme-driven, we make surmises about the missing material. It will be like those chess problems by Sam Loyd and T.R. Dawson that take back-figuring how a given position can have come about. Sure enough, like cities (Intro paragraph 2), 'claustrophobic' we can relate to, the starting array intermixes both teams, the very key element, themed, and a good one for their wavering urbanized millions. Universal applicability: not just for 'the four South Pennine metropolitan areas.' 10x8 the extras being ranks. The proverbial River. 4 Marshalls per side are a bit of a stranglehold. Steward is Centennial quadra-Pawn. NO KING(?!). Anyway, why cannot an anti-monarchist with extensive nomenclature just re-name 'King' and 'Queen'? How about 'Nick' and 'Neek', 'King' and 'Queen' backwards. [After all, Gilman says 'Prince' here is 'without the u*NIQ*ueness' and *NIQ* is Queen backwards] Princess would be agent provocateur, changing teams each time stepping across River: is it worth a capture to transform the piece from our White to Black? As a guess (remember no RULES section available), keeping any royal one, Q, Prince(2), Princess prevents checkmate. Later, here's soft copy of Rules. Pawn promotes at River to Steward. Okay, there's some jimmying, but we were close, not delving now into whether or when 'Coronation' (Prince changing to standard King) is advantageous. In a recent CV precis, we ignored NOTES. Here we ignore NOTES and RULES, not having them, yet their sweep and essence are indeed prefigured under 'Introduction' and 'Pieces' alone. Thus showing that a strong theme dictates its own rules as it were ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. 'Essence' reminds that Quintessence(Knappen) may be better than overused Rose. Another connection to think about: how this Princess has rough similarity to Lavieri's Promoter. Also, team four-player works the same as two-player really when no incomplete information like Bridge. It may as well be two-, three-, six- or eight-player conceptually, the extras being functional kibitzers.
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Following up on the previous comment, the old PBM Game Logs are still available on this site, including the very first game of Unicorn Great Chess. Many thanks for all your hard work, Fergus. I am planning to take a week or two off from commenting - catch you later.