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Is there a way to know before accepting a challenge what time requirements the game will have?[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
dax00 wrote on Mon, Dec 16, 2019 02:36 PM UTC:

Time controls are shown right above the "Accept" button.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Dec 16, 2019 10:56 AM UTC:

As I don't seem to find the answer myself: Is there a way to know before accepting a challenge what time requirements the game will have?


New pieces in TenCubed Chess [Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Stanislav Kravchenko wrote on Sat, Dec 14, 2019 06:48 PM UTC:

I have a request to those who can create and edit types of chess for the program ChessV. You can add to the Ten Cubes of Chess two figures of Zanny and General, as they walk, clearly shown here: https://yandex.ru/images/search?text=%D1%88%D0%B0%D1%85%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5%20%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%B3%D1%83%D1%80%D1%8B%20%D1%88%D1%83%D1%82%20%D0%B8%20%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BB&from=tabbar&pos=2&img_url=https%3A%2F%2Fic.pics.livejournal.com%2Fobninskchess_ru%2F72180556%2F575637%2F575637_original.gif&rpt=simage And you need to place them on the sides of the Champions, Zanny should be only his own color, so it should be located on the queenside. General is accordingly royal.


Backup[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Glenn Nicholls wrote on Thu, Nov 28, 2019 11:06 AM UTC:

It seems there may not have been a backup for a week - has this been forgotten?


Board games and aging[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Joe Joyce wrote on Wed, Nov 27, 2019 04:51 PM UTC:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191126140413.htm


Something amiss with What's New page?[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Kevin Pacey wrote on Sun, Nov 17, 2019 04:57 AM UTC:

At the moment I cannot see any newly approved submissions between 0 and 60 days old displayed on the What's New page (as accessed from the CVP home page).


Frog chess[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Nov 14, 2019 09:45 AM UTC:

Capablanca Chess has about 16% draw rate between equal players, compared to orthodox Chess about 32%. (That doesn't account for the limit of near-perfect play, possibly with the aid of exhaustive opening theory that prevents mistakes before the game reaches the stage of a dead draw.)

Draw rates tend to fall for games within a group of players of very diverse strength, as many games will be a guaranteed win for the strongest player.


Kevin Pacey wrote on Thu, Nov 14, 2019 04:36 AM UTC:

I've added to my previous post with some edits, in case anyone missed it.


Kevin Pacey wrote on Thu, Nov 14, 2019 02:30 AM UTC:

If you mean the Frog Chess variant that I invented some year(s) ago, and submitted to this CVP website, I only know of the games that have been played so far on Game Courier (on this website), and at the moment there's been no draws in about 17 games (one opponent long ago deleted an unfinished game I had been playing with him, after he apparently realized he had been counting on an illegal frog piece move, that he tried soon enough).

However, other than myself, I don't know of any chess master who has played Frog Chess on Game Courier. Below elite player level in chess (that is, well beyond master level), draws are far less likely, in over-the-board games, simply because there are more mistakes made by non-elites, and it's assumed a very well played game of chess should end in a draw.

I don't know of the drawing percentages for Capablanca Chess, but on Game Courier (on this website), I wouldn't be surprised if there are next to no draws, even though many games have been played with it. Again, one reason would be that the players here are nowhere near world chess elite strength in terms of skill at chess or other chess variants, as far as I know, and my own guess is that Capablanca Chess is far from being an extremely drawish game (the same would go for Frog Chess). Lastly, it may be worth noting that there are no books on Frog Chess or Capablanca Chess (afaik), unlike for chess, so players of any level would be feeling their way in the dark rather more.

Here's a link to the logs of finished Frog Chess games as played on Game Courier so far:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/logs.php?game=Frog+Chess&age=0&stat=finished

[edit: Here's a link to the logs of finished Capablanca Chess games played on Game Courier so far - one in 45 was drawn to date; it was one of my games, agreed drawn since there was a long delay before a bug to the preset was fixed, a bug which affected that game in particular:]

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/logs.php?game=Capablanca+Chess&age=0&stat=finished

[edit: Here's a link to the logs of finished Chess games played on Game Courier so far - ten in 159 were drawn to date:]

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/logs.php?game=Chess&age=0&stat=finished

[edit: For what it's worth, in International Master John Watson's 1998 book, Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy, he quotes monster chess database figures as 40-30-30 in terms of post-1965 White win-Drawn-Black win percentages for all levels of competitive tournament chess players taken as a whole, and says these rates have been quite stable; note the figures also mean that White scores 55%, and Black 45%, in terms of results.]


James Zuercher wrote on Thu, Nov 14, 2019 01:36 AM UTC:

How does Frog Chess compare with normal chess and Capablanca chess in terms of percent draws?


A modest proposal about pawns[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
JT K wrote on Sat, Oct 19, 2019 02:47 PM UTC:

Maybe 1. a5 would be a hassle for Black to deal with in 8x8, but... maybe Black can aim for the center as a response.


Kevin Pacey wrote on Sat, Oct 19, 2019 05:24 AM UTC:

In FIDE chess, 1.e2-e4 d7-d5 2.e4xd5 Qd8xd5 3.Nb1-c3 Qd5-d6 is a very popular way to play the Scandinavian Defence for Black these days, and so the sequence 1.e2-e5 d7-d4 2.e5xd6e.p. Qd8xd6 that you mention in your proposed variant would seem to be a whole tempo up on that popular Scandinavian Defence line for Black (although the pawns move differently here, it may not help White out much by comparison). So, at least for the sequence you gave, Black is not clearly hurting because of the different pawn rules.


JT K wrote on Sat, Oct 19, 2019 04:26 AM UTC:

Today I was thinking about large board variants and their typical "two step" pawn-at-any-time option and "three step pawns" and I thought of a possible idea for pawn movement in general, for ALL board sizes, even 8x8 or smaller.  The main idea is a way of speeding up the game and giving pawns just a bit more power at the right time, while keeping some restraints.

So here it is: what's to stop us from playing with pawns that can slide straight forward as far as they want?  They still capture only one square diagonally.  My added rule is this: ANY piece or pawn can capture en passant at any square that it just moved through.

1. e5 looks too powerful for White as a first move, but what about 1. .... d4 as a response?  If e x d6 e.p. then Qxd6.  Black isn't hopeless here. 

Admitedly I haven't studied it much or played it, but let's discuss!

 


Testing[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Oct 17, 2019 04:33 PM UTC:

I just checked my page rules on Cloudflare. They are set to cache drawdiagram.php and to bypass the cache for all other PHP scripts. In case it helps, I just chopped the "www." part off of the URLs. From what I understand of the documentation, this is not required.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Oct 17, 2019 04:14 PM UTC:

Although I haven't got a response to my ticket, and the host still says "Virtual server not found", things do appear to be working again.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Oct 16, 2019 03:30 PM UTC:

As far as I can tell, there is a problem with the server. It is somehow partly online and partly offline, and it is also affecting my blog, which has its own domain. I have submitted a ticket about this to the hosting service, and they will hopefully do something about it.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Oct 16, 2019 01:24 AM UTC:

Testing again. The host says " Virtual server not found ", but pages are showing up, and I was able to log in. I haven't been able to move in Game Courier all day. I get 520 errors when I try to, but I've seen that other people have moved today.


Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Oct 15, 2019 10:45 PM UTC:

I had this problem in the past but I thought it had been resolved ... six months ago maybe?


H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Oct 15, 2019 05:20 PM UTC:

Well, now you are testing, perhaps you can also test this: when I was submitting my latest chess variant, the submission form was using cached data every time I opened it to make a change. With as a result that the modifications I made would have disappeared next time I opened the input form, unless I would first refresh it with Shift + Load to ignore cached data.

I am not sure if this is just a problem with my FireFox settings, but it seems very undesirable behavior.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Oct 15, 2019 03:02 PM UTC:

Testing.


New game on CV - Horseman Pawns[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
wdtr2 wrote on Sat, Aug 10, 2019 05:42 PM UTC:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Wildebeast_9&settings=default


Change your password[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
John Lawson wrote on Thu, Aug 8, 2019 11:07 PM UTC:

I've had emails like that, similar to yours.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Aug 6, 2019 05:46 PM UTC:

A while ago, one longtime member shared with me an extortion scam email he had received that included his CVP password in it. Today I received a similar email that included my CVP password. If you get such emails, just ignore them. It talks about installing malware on your computer, recording your passwords, recording you through your webcam, then conveniently removing all trace of the malware from your computer. It's just a scam, not a real extortion threat.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the password it included in the email was the one for this site. Until just now, I had not changed it in years, and several years ago, all passwords here were encrypted as MD5 hashes. This is very insecure, because there is a fixed relationship between the original word and the encryption, which allows people to build translation dictionaries that can identify your password from its MD5 hash.

If there were really malware on my computer monitoring my passwords, the hacker could just as easily steal my Paypal password, which would prove lucrative without going through the trouble of trying to blackmail me.

If you have not changed your password in a long time, it will still be encrypted as an MD5 hash. To fix this, sign in and change your password. Your new password will be encrypted in a format that does not have a 1-to-1 relation with the password, and it will be much more secure. While you could keep the same password and just update its encryption, that is what I had done, and this email proved that this was not enough to protect my password. The best thing you can do to protect your password is to change it.


Video Tutorial[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Aug 3, 2019 05:50 PM UTC:

ChessV is open source and it contains a simple scripting langauge for modifying games or creating new ones.  It is hit-or-miss with what you can do in the scripting language.  Usually, you can add or remove piece types, create new piece types, and select what rules are in effect.  You cannot, however, create new rules with the scripting language at this time.  Most of what you suggest would be new rules and would require you to change the C# source code and recompile.

The download comes with several games that are defined in the scripting language, the most advanced being Butterfly Chess.


H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Jul 31, 2019 07:19 AM UTC:

Are you talking about Game Courier now to play it here on-line, or about ChessV? I don't think that in ChessV you can do any of these things; ChessV is not a general configurable variant engine, although it does have a mechanism to configure some (mostly minor) rule variations on the games it supports. And I don't think it is open source. Greg can tell us more about that.

As for Game Courier; I am sure all that is possible there, but in practice you have to be a programmer to be able to write a rule enforcing preset. For this reason the large majority of presets have no rule enforcing at all, and just leave it to the players to enforce the rules. Erroneous rule enforcing is much worse than having no enforcement at all. This should be a good option for the mentioned 100-cell chess, as the location-dependent move rules seem to give it above-average complexity.


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