Pythagoras: Your word use, grammar, punctuation, and smilies, are very like Chessmaster1000.

I am on the live site waiting for a game of Gothic if anyone wants to play.

And congrats to Andreas for winning a blitz game in 10 with 12 second increment against me yesterday. I reached what I thought was a very comfortable position, and the tide of the game turned almost instantly. It was a bizarre sort of game, I will post it when the webmaster emails it to me and I annotate it.

Pythagoras:

Well, please send me your proof of the Pythagorrean Theorem, or evidence that the moon is NOT made out of green cheese.

What I stated was a belief based on my experience and I never offered anything more than that.

Mely holds close to an International Master title in chess, and is well-versed in Janus Chess also. I was down a Queen + 3 pawns vs. the Archbishop (Janus) while playing white because Black was able to run me out of good moves. It was like distance zugzwang. I was able to dispose of those pawns to get the draw, a difficult concept to realize. And, I was able to win with Black against Mely, again, a very tough competitor.

I would like to believe that never having suffered a loss in Janus while collecting a fair number of wins allows me the freedom to speculate that the game might be inherently easier to play from Black's perspective.

White is also at a disadvantage by moving first in Janus. I had a hard time drawing Mely as white, and a much easier time winning with Black. Tough to explain, but I just think white is practically in zugzwang in the beginning of the game.

If you do sign up, let us know what your name is on the site. Also, players are meeting at the discussion board to post game requests here:

http://s13.invisionfree.com/Gothic_Chess_Forum/index.php?showforum=8


And the first person who wins a game against me on a Tuesday gets $50, but so far, no winners (although I had as little as 2 seconds on my clock when I checkmated one player.)

WhisperzQ: Type it again, Whisperz.

WhiteTower: Nope, but I am one step closer to bringing Fischer together with Kasparov to play Gothic Chess.

http://www.gothicchess.org/fischer_kasparov.html

We would have to change the name of this place to "Rick's"

:)

Sumerian:

I added another topic area where you can see the current position.

http://s13.invisionfree.com/Gothic_Chess_Forum/index.php?showtopic=25

rabbitoid: I think after 48 hours, the hardware difference is negligible. The branching factor is such that almost any machine will get you to the same nominal depth. Say with all of your pruning tricks your software branching factor is 4, down from about 50 in the actual game.

That means if ply X completes at time T, ply X+1 requires 4T, X+2 needs 16T, X+3 64T, etc.

If the speed differential was a factor of 4, meaning one machine was 4 times faster than the other, even after 2 days, the faster machine would only outsearch the other by 1 ply.

I am sure Reinhard's hardware is within a factor or 2 of mine, maybe even less. I have a 2.8 GHz Pentium IV.

I have proposed a friendly 2-game match with S.M.I.R.F. here:

http://s13.invisionfree.com/Gothic_Chess_Forum/index.php?showtopic=23

Time controls are 1 move in 48 hours (which is not going to be rigidly enforced if Reinhard needs extra time.)

If Reinhard accepts, diagrams will be supplied there so everyone can see the most current position.

I think this will be an interesting match. I would like to know how many nodes S.M.I.R.F. explores each move, what depth it reaches, and its evaluation.

What do you say Reinhard?

naughtypawn:

Do you know how many people have paid to play a game of Gothic Chess, in the whole wide world, because of the patent?

0.

The patent has no bearing on an individual, a tournament director, or anyone else interested in playing the game.

It just prevents a company from saying "Wow there are 40,000 Gothic Chess players out there, let's capitalize on their hard work and make our own game and sell it."

You pay royalties for intellectual property every time you buy a DVD, download music (legally), or buy certain pots and pans.

Those who talk about having to pay to play Gothic Chess have absolutely no understanding of patent law. The only thing you need to do is buy a set, and you would have to pay for that anyway.

Test link to completely annotated games:

http://s13.invisionfree.com/Gothic_Chess_Forum/index.php?showtopic=16&st=0#entry21232

The new forum is online now for those who are playing in the Gothic Chess ladders and wish to keep their rungs and play more

http://s13.invisionfree.com/Gothic_Chess_Forum/index.php

Nasmichael:

I am noticing this as well. I am having more trouble with White than Black in Janus. It is almost like White starts off in Zugzwang!

Look at this for example:

http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=874384

I have white and was down a Queen + 3 pawns for an Archbishop (Janus). This is a very difficult draw to execute!

I have been having more difficulties getting into good positions as white in Janus chess, but when playing black is seems a bit easier.

Anyone else experiencing this?

To the person who emailed me without giving me your BrainKing id, here is the link you requested:

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

andreas: Yes there is Andreas. We need to reorganize the database a bit to handle this, but it can be done. Essentially we will just set the "timer" to 2880 minutes per move (instead of time per game) and keep your "table" open, just not visible to others until you log in.

It won't be ready for a while, but it is planned.

WhiteTower:

I took Gothic Chess off of CowPlay after they did not pay their licensing fee.

The situation here is different.

If you fail to see the difference, talk to someone who is interested in explaining it to you.

You need java to play at http://www.GothicChessLive.com

So Java parses out the pages after making a database layer connection, then generates an indexed list of straight html pages?

I didnt know WebTV could access java.

BrainKing does not use Java.

Sumerian:

Reinhard, that is truly very, very funny :) I will tell Alexis you said that :)

Somebody has won a game in the "win a date with Alexis" tournament...

http://brainking.com/en/Tournaments?tri=54818#1

tedbarber:

Just so you (and everyone else) knows, it is purely up to Fencer. I have not called for Gothic Chess to be removed, nor suggested it in any way.

http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=950868

I would like to believe, as white, I could win every time after black played 2..e5?

When a game is lost, the losing player may make any excuse, as all are equally valid

I used to tell people I lost because I had a sore thumb. :)

Vortex VI

A new version of Gothic Vortex is being prepared. I am including a PGN archive of games played on BrainKing.

If you would like your games to be made available on CD, download all of your games, and send them to me at GothicChessInfo@aol.com

Please make a zip archive of your games.

Thanks to all who participate!

Anyone who has won their sections in this tournament should contact me for their prizes:

http://brainking.com/en/Tournaments?trg=6703&tri=25674&trnst=2&tp=41

I am up for suggestions on how to determine a winner. Perhaps on http://www.GothicChessLive.com one evening?

Like I said, the legal term is Ipse Idem, which translates as "the terms are the same" or "the meanings are equal" depending on the application. There should really be no further public discussion of this, do you not agree?

If you do a new game, you will see ". (read all rules)" next to every description.

This implies what you are reading are rules, or a subset of the rules.

Ipse idem, in legal terms.

"descriptions" is plural -- everywhere rules are described, the description is required.

I asked Filip to make this change to be in full compliance, and he has elected to challenge it.

It is no longer up to me to help him, he has to help himself, or abide by a ruling by a 3rd party arbitrator.

Since this involves nobody other than Filip and myself, no other comments will be given on this matter.

I have a contract with Filip's signature on it. Paragraph 6 states:

6. ADDITIONAL STIPULATIONS - In addition, the Licensee will host the domain of GothicChess.org at no cost to the Licenser for the same duration. The Licensee will also include the following text in the descriptions of the rules of the game as they appear on BrainKing.com:

Gothic Chess is an 80-square variation of chess that adds two ne pieces to the board: an Archbishop, and a Chancellor. This game is most closely related to Capablanca's Chess and Bird's Chess, invented by Ed Trice in the year 2000.


You can see that the current description does not come close to matching this:

Gothic Chess is a variant of Bird's or Capablanca's Chess that has the Archbishop (Knight + Bishop) and Chancellor (Knight + Rook) set up slightly different. It is played on an 8 x 10 chessboard.

This license is also in effect until March 31, 2007.

I have given Filip every opportunity to honor the contract.

It will take some time, but BrainKing.com will honor the contract.

Yeah I need to publish the spec for the automated play. I have it maybe 98% done.

Maybe we can have the programs play on GothicChessLive.com and have an interface for them to send moves to it?

What do you think?

By the way, Gothic Vortex now has the SMP code turned on, so it takes advantage of multiprocessor machines. I have also finished the code to have it probe the 5-piece tablebases in RAM. And I converted it to 64-bit native code.

On a 4x Opteron, it searches at 3.5 million positions per second.

The Vortex in the next World Championship will be very, very different :)

I researched the different boards, but some people only translated the names, and not the piece movements associated with them. For example, Capablanca had a Cardinal and a Marshall at one point in time, so did Bird. But Capablanca changed his pieces to Marshall and Chancellor, then Chancellor and Archbishop. So most people do not take into account Bird's Cardinal is not the Archbishop, it was our Chancellor, and his Marshall is not a Chancellor, but was the Archbishop.

It is very confusing, I know.

Bird's array should have the chancellor and archbishop switched.

Remember, his cardinal and marshall were DIFFERENT than Capablanca's, and later when they were called Chancellor and Archbishop, they were translated "flopped".

The Bird setup you can play this mate in 2 with:

1. Ch3 Nc6?? 2. Cxh7#

White pawn: a2
White Knight: a1
White King: i1
Black King: i8
Black Knight: j8

White to move can only draw!

But, move the white King from i1 to h1, and it is a mate in 33 where the pawn promotes to a Chancellor to win most quickly.

The secret lies with Charlotte.

ColonelCrockett: Looks like you made the list at #17 so far. Why not challenge Dresden at #16 and see what happens?

http://brainking.com/en/Profile?u=12010

Here are some more pictures of Alexis Skye...

http://www.gothicchess.org/alexis_pictures.html

Don't forget there is a "win a date with her" tournament started September 1st!

Here is the page with the mate in 268 (scroll down.) I think the mate in 202 was much more interesting, since it was Archbishop vs. Bishop + Knight.

http://www.gothicchess.org/gv_release.html

WhiteTower: Grim Reaper: Come on, Ed, you calculated that mate in two-hundred-something moves, this one should be easy-peasy :)

Actually, it was 268 moves, and that was an endgame database generator program, not me!

The longest mate I think I actually correctly predicted on here was in 33 moves.

ChessCarpenter:

Yeah I must be geting old. Wait, we are almost the exact same age.

The live site at http://www.GothicChessLive.com now has game timers, including the Fischer clock for time increments, as well as a rating system for bullet, blitz, and regular time controls.

WhiteTower: I am in check about to lose my Chancellor wich is the only thing keeping his pawn from promoting. The game was clearly over for me

Great win by ChessCarpenter. I never thought I would lose a game with the white pieces!

http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=655187

I have no clue what this is saying.

http://www.kv.minsk.by/index2005310901.htm

One thing I noticed when I access the Task Manager (cntrl-alt-del) is that sometimes Netscape is showing a process already running under the Processes tab (not the Applications tab) and at these times, I do not get the Java applet components sent to me properly.

Run the Task Manager before you launch your browser. Hit the Processes tab, then sort the "Mem Usage" in descending order (highest to lowest). Look for a process named similar to your browser. If the browser has not even been launched yet, select that item, then click on the End Process button down on the lower right.

Launch your browser.

This has always produced success for me.