david upshaw: I'd prefer to go second in Knight Fight. The advantage of picking the same colour as white, and hence be able to block white while white will never be able to block you far outweight the possibility of white being able to do an extra move.

I don't see the point of having two seperate board systems, with not knowing whether the same name used elsewhere is the same person or not, so I will comment on brainking.info messages here, not there.

Anyway, I really don't get the "great emphasis is being put on players to keep notes (if they want to win).". What's that all about? That's what computers are for. Keeping notes in a game that lasts for just 2 hours with no other games being played at the mean time is ok, but for a turn based site, where there are lots of players making a habit of dragging games out into months, if not years? Come on. Doesn't make any sense to me, and for me, would totally take away the playing pleasure.

Heck, if "keeping notes" is supposed to be fun, why not get rid of all the graphics of all the games? Just send "14 Kf3" by message, and let the player keep notes if (s)he wants to win a chess game!

dicepro: So, it's just a complicated way of saying "each side has one knight"?

Brianking.info mentions Knight 64, with some rules. The second rule "Two Knights of different colour" mystifies me. Bishops of different colour, I can understand, but Knights? They change colour after each move, don't they?

I guess it's meant that the knights are on different colours during setup - but then it still is not clear to me. Is it 2 knights each? Or does black have to place his/her knight on a different colour as white? If the latter, white has an advantage (the same advantage black has in Knight Fight because (s)he can place the knight on the same colour white did).

But regardless, I think white has a (small) advantage of going first. As I can distill from the rules, it's not always that black has as many moves as white - if the game ends because black cannot move, white will have had one more move. Furthermore, even if white and black will have had an even number of moves, on whites turn, there will be more numbers on the board than on blacks turn, which in the long run will give white an edge (because he has had more choices). The advantage is small, but still there.

I wonder, could the advantage be balanced by giving black 0.5 points at the start (meaning that if black and white collect the same number of points, black wins)?

coan.net: I think Knight Fight is already dark enough. I certainly am not taking the trouble to scan a 10x10 board to match up the number pairs. I just look what move(s) I can play, and which moves my opponent can play, and I assume none of the squares disappear.

MadMonkey: Well, that would leave you with 9 other double numbers, 8 of them that will disappear pairwise. What will happen if someone lands on the final double number?

dicepro: Ah, so "Knights of Fury" will even be longer than "Knight Fight". ;-)

In Knight Fight, no game can last past 50 half moves - then all the numbers have gone. As I see from you latest proposal (why are game proposals first posted here, then continued elsewhere???), the limit for Knights of Fury is 52 half moves (40 non-grouped numbers, 24 grouped numbers).

Personally, I find the rules still to be inelegant - numbers ending in 7, 8, 9 are different from numbers ending in 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Oh well. I hope the game gets playtested well before it's implemented.

dicepro: I'm not at all sure these rules will lead to a shorter game. Sure, there will be less squares, but my (short) experience so far with Knight Fight is that games end way before all squares have been visited. The game ends because one of the knights has no moves available, and it's the disappearance of the squares that causes it. But the dealing of numbers in "Knights of Fury" is clumsy and inelegant (because you're using decimal numbers and an 8x8 grid). As a result, over 25% of the numbers don't have mirrors. So, Knights of Fury starts with less numbers, but the numbers disappear slower.

Therefore, I suggest something else. Still use an 8x8 board. Use octal numbers (that is, only the digits 0-7 are used). Use the same rules as with Knight Fight when it comes to moving and disappearing of numbers. But don't count points. First person who cannot move his knight loses. And since going first is then a disadvantage, force black to start from a different coloured square than white.

I noticed that when you are accepting a game from the "Waiting games" page, you get to see the board before you commit yourself to the game. This is suboptimal - someone could go "cherry picking", not playing the game if the board is unfavourable, and only playing those games where the board is favourable.

OTOH, there's no penalty on deleting a game if it turns out that the board is unfavourable to you.

dicepro: Just use octal numbers.

dicepro: No, I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that if the knights start on the same square, only the white knight can find itself blocked to access certain squares (because those squares are attacked by the black knight); if the knights start on different squares, only the black knight will be effected. And since it's black who decides whether the knights start on the same or on a different square, black has the advantage.

OTOH, white goes first, and that's an advantage as well (in this game, black will never have more moves than white, but sometimes white has one more move than black, and almost every move scores (except when hitting 00)). What the bigger advantage is, I do not know.

I wonder how much of an advantage the rule "a knight cannot land on a square which is under direct attack of the opponent's knight" gives to black. White has to place his knight first, and if black places his knight on the same coloured square as white, black will never be "blocked" by white's knight, while the white knight might find squares unavailable to it because of the position of the black knight.

Of course, if black puts his knight on a square of a different colour, white gains that advantage, but it's up to black to do this - white cannot influence it.