Suppose on an 8x8 board there is a white pawn on c5, and white' king is very far away, like h1. Where can the black king catch it?

The answer is found by drawing a square that includes c5 on the bottom-left from white's perspective. c5..c6..c7..c8.. now over the same number ...d8..e8..f8 then down to ...f7..f6..f5...and back over ..e5..d5..c5.

If it is the black king to move, he must be able to reach this square, or else white promotes and wins.

OK, now "the concept of the square" can be used in other ways. This geometric trick can be used to determine "any square", not just a promotion square, that must be reached in order to save a draw.

Because the gothic board is wider, there are usually fewer "crowning races" but more "horizontal opposition races" when it comes to K + P endings. Usually pawns are on each side of the board, somebody tosses one to get a king out of position, then races over to the other side to take them all out from behind. You can tell at a glance geometrically if you can resign or if you should run like hell after the king.

I think it is time for me to put up some more web page material. This is a topic that has no real equivalent in the 8x8 world.

--Ed

juangrande: Yes, these are all points to consider, and I am interested in the future developments consequent to testing various hypotheses. It seems as though we are touching on a sort of frontier, though limited it may be, for where else is a man to find uncharted territory anymore?? /Fx/

juangrande: Do you know Professor McFarland at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Whitewater? The web pages he has are stimulating. I have taken some of them to use as wallpaper for my daughter's computer in hopes that she looks for colleges using such information. Thank you for the tip!

Well, since you did all the maths for this, it should be quite right.

I've got nothing to back up, but I feel a little 'naked' without the AB after its been exchanged off. I suppose that I would grade/value the AB a little higher, but that depends on the other available pieces on the board. You've seen some of my games and the damage I inflict with the 'peculiar' AB :)

Anyways, a note to Felix... I do follow what you guys are going on about this with great interest. Its just that I dont really have time to go into all the details, but I suppose that I try to remember whatever I can and apply it OTB.

Regards all,
65
*********
Pawn 1.00
Knight 2.50
Bishop 3.00
Rook 4.75
Archbishop 6.50
Chancellor 8.25
Queen 8.75

It is that time again. I am looking for someone to volunteer to write for the Aprill 2003 "Guest Writer" spot for my website. If you have not seen the March editorial, done by chesscarpenter...


click here to see it.

The title of the article is "How To Beat Ed Trice", which, I think, could have been called something else :)

While Rob did annotate one of his wins against me, the content of the Guest Writer spot need not be a Gothic Chess game.

Write about the weather in your home town. Talk about the war with Iraq. Let others now what your favorite ice cream is. It does not matter.

I will review all of the submissions and select one for the month. I will keep all of the material, perhaps for a later issue.

All of the columns will be kept in an archive, so it will not "disappear" when it is over.

Just so you know, my own column...

Inventors Corner

...is really just some silly ramblings about caterpillars and Jesus' Grandpa this month. Pretty light reading by anyones standards.

So, give it some thought, send me whatever you like to GothicChess@aol.com and I will contact you afterwards.

--Ed

transmorgrafication is actually transmorgrification according to Calcin and Hobbes at this page: http://www.geocities.com/bow_of_odysseus/ic.html

LOL :)

I found the bug in my database code. It was very stupid, of course. But hopefully you will be able to understand my logic flaw. Ok, the endgame is Bishop + Knight versus King. You are on the strong side, and you know you have a mate in 1 move. So I was generating every Bishop move from the position, then testing to see if the enemy King was checkmated. I was also generating every Knight move from the position to see if the enemy King was checkmated.

There, now do you see my logic flaw?

It is subtle. And it is NOT related to the Knight not being able to force checkmate. There are certainly mate-in-1 positions where the Knight seals the win due to an opponent's misplay.

I WAS NOT GENERATING KING MOVES LOOKING FOR MATES IN 1!

It never occured to me that the King could move in such a way to reveal the Bishop and exhaust a flight square for the enemy King, so my mate in 1 list was incomplete. This effects everything else in the database.

Now that it has been indentified, I will recompute the database, then regrade everybody's longest win.

--Ed

Ed, how does looking for King moves or not looking for King moves affect the whole database? Does the program have to consider where the King can move when a Bishop or Knight move will effect checkmate? And how do I enter your "contest"? I was reading the postings, and just found out.

Fernando, the database is generated starting by assembling all of the checkmate positions first. From each of these, you generate legal moves "in reverse". That means, you "undo" one move, then it is the mating side to move, and the move you undid must lead to a mate in 1 since the parent position was a checkmate. From all of these mate in 1 positions, you have the other side try to avoid entering the position. If every legal move leads to the mate in 1, then that side to move is mated in 2, etc.

From the parent position, I did not generate king moves, which means should the white king have been able to move and REVEAL a check of the bishop that resulted in a checkmate, that position was not assigned a "mate in 1" value. Since everything else in the database depends on all of this information, it has to be recomputed.

To enter the contest, just tell me where you want to place a knight, bishop and king that results in the longest checkmate of an enemy king, The board has 80 squares, a1 through j8. Good luck in the contest.

--Ed

Recently, juangrande commented to me the following: "One feature of Gothic is that there is no opening book (yet)." Since I am brand new to this fascinating form of chess, I had been wondering about that very thing. Ed, has there yet begun any "standard" opening moves to appear with sufficient frequency as to warrant a name? Like is there a gothic equivalent of the Ruy Lopez, the French Def., the Sicilian Def., etc.?

Just curious.

Yes there have been, especially among the Indian type openings. I think the names should bear the trademark of the person who forges the system, and I do not think we should call them by their chess equivalents (like the Gothic Reti of Gothic Alekhine.)

I would like to know everyone's thoughts on this. I am thinking since you could have an opening named after yourself, it would be like very much by everyone :)

Ed, I agree that it wouldn't be unique or appropriate enough to use names from standard chess, as you point out. I was only using those terms as an example. Of course, the players of gothic would surely be pleased to have a sequence of moves with their names associated with it. I sure would.

What are some of the current names so far? Where could we see them listed or described?

I think we might as well start naming them here. I used to "cater" to the chess crowd and adopted some names with chess counterparts, like the Pirc-Kahn Defense, since it would be apparent to a chess player what motifs have been transplanted.

How about we do this: instead of people jsut sending in concocted moves and posting them here, how about we derive names from their current games on BrainKing as a basis?

There is one opening that I have labeled "Trice's Gambit", which is a little unsound, but interesting. Maybe I will make a web page that everyone can look at, then we can discuss the information on the website here.

Does that sound like a good idea?

The names on the website are subject to change based on popular feedback.

More on this later.

--Ed

Looks like a winner ... keep up the good work :)

You forgot my trident variation used in Streetman's game. :)

The web page is now up but not linked to the rest of the webste yet:

Openings

Let me know what you think.

--Ed

I think (hope?) you are going to have your work cut out keeping up ... you have set a high standard to start.

i concur with whisperz. You will have trouble maintaining that database. Trust me, Im still working on the 3000 odd openings for regular chess after 3 years.

I am still looking for you article for the Guest Writer position for this month. Have you put anything together yet?

*prays*
thank you for causing me to finish said article for Ed yesterday, so that I can rub it into his face today :P

65: Yes its done, and I'm going to mail it to you RTFN, with some notes included for your eyes only. You will also need to verify the reference to Capablanca chess. I have something to do here... boss is jumping up and down already.

Would it be at all possible to have a mating pattern named after someone? Here's a game I played against an unknown USCF 1600 rated player outside the 2001 North American Open. I think that my mate in this game is rather unique. The time control was G/30 here are the moves:

1. f4 f5
2. Nh3 Nh6
3. e3 g6
4. g3 e5
5. Nc3 Bf6
6. Bd5 Ae7
7. Bb3 c6
8. Ae2 d5
9. d4 exd4
10. exd4 Qb6 (to bait White into Castling)
11. O-O Ng4
12. Cd3 Cg7
13. a4 Ch5
14. a5 Qc7
15. Qe1 Ci5
16. NxC Bxj2+
17. Kj1 Nxh2+
18. RxN Ai3++

Granted the play here wasn't of the highest caliber; but I had only played a handful of Gothic games at this point. Still I feel this game illustrates some of the tactical richness possible to Gothic Chess.

There are plenty of chess programs for replaying games and exploring alternatives, does anyone know of one which can be used for (or modified to suit) Gothic Chess?

I hope there is not any at this point, because the existence of one would be a direct infringement on my patent! If anyone knows of one, please let me know.

Just to let everyone know, I am building a graphical user interface that will not only replay games, but act as a database as well. That is, as you enter moves, it will build a list of games where the same position occurred, and you can automatically naviagate through the games to see how others played your opening.

Thanks to Windows XP being such a boondoggle, this thing is nowhere near being ready for release yet, but look for it this summer.

I don't see why we can't have a "Pawnchucker's Mate" since there are mating patterns in chess!

Look at:

Morphy's Mate for a look at a Morphy Mate from 1859. I am thinking about having a mate with an Archbishop against a king not in the corner named after me :)

as a newcomer to Janus chess, I'd like to share with you all what, for me anyway, was a very pleasant & gratifying win, my latest, in fact. It features the powers of the 2 Janus pieces working together to produce a mate. I also gave up my Q & sacrificed a N to get to the final position. It was played vs ArnieTxx (Game ID: 67619). I hope you enjoy it.

-Terry Trotter (aka jestone)

With only 7 Gothic games completed, I'm under no illusions about being good yet. but, hey, we all gotta start sometime. Here (Game ID: 67668) is perhaps my most satisfying win so far. It's vs an old friend & combatant, Blind Fury, who I met on IYT last fall. We've had many a tussle, he usually winning ... except in Gothic, where he has yet to beat me in 3 games. (Hooray, for Gothic!) I hope it is seen as good by others.

--Terry (jestone)

here is the link to Terry's game.


BF_vs_Jestone

While I'm at it, learning how to post games to the DB, I'd like to show my first example of a one-piece (Janus) mate. Go to Game #49611.

You certainly had Munwest on the run. You could also have tried:
29. Bb7 ?? (move doesn't matter)
30. Ja6#

OK, since we've started showcasing games (and mating patterns), here's my submission. The game is also accessible via my profile. (I would provide the link, but since Ed's link to Terry's game didn't work for me, my link probably wouldn't work, either.) I also won't claim that the game is "high-caliber", but the mating combination at the end is an interesting Knight-Chancellor mate.

good7972 vs. juangrande
1. d4 f6
2. e4 Ac4+
3. Ae2 Axe2+
4. Qxe2 Nc6
5. c3 d5
6. g3 Cd6
7. exd5 Na5
8. g4 Bd7
9. Bg2 Bb5
10. Cd3 Bxd3
11. Qxd3 Cf7
12. b4 g5
13. bxa5 Nh6
14. Qe2 Bg7
15. Nh3 Qd7
16. Bf3 O-O
17. O-O Nj5
18. Rg1 Nh4
19. Be4 Ch6
20. Nd2 Ci4
21. Bh1 Nj3+
22. Kj1 Cxh2#

So true, seen in retrospect. As it turned out tho, I managed a single J mate. I just didn't quite know how to manuevre my forces well at that time. Thx for the tip.

I would like to play this out, but I don't have a gothic set. It would be nice if we could play it out on the computer, though. If that is what was being said earlier, I'm sorry for the repetition.

Also, did you get my question about Professor McFarland at the Univ. of Wisconsin/Whitewater? I have a neighbor who teaches math at UCLA, and he says that a colleague of his is a graduate of UW, and that they are world-renowned for their excellent math teacher training program. I told him about McFarland's use of chess in his Finite Mathematics course, and he was impressed.

The professor may be interested in the math on this discussion board.

Does anyone here also play on GameKnot or IYT or some other site? If so, what are your names and which site?

--Ed

Whisperz is Whisperz generally everywhere except at Yahoo where Whisperz is Whipserzq (Monty Python fans will understand).

my Gameknot name is ttrotter. for IYT & atlanticchess it's kaprekar. for worldchess.net it's tomcat.

-Terry Trotter, jestone

When to resign & when to play on against greater odds is the eternal dilemma in chess. In this rematch vs bilal (he won the first one), I was considering resigning at about move #25, but decided "what the heck, a few more moves wouldn't hurt. After all, I do have my 2 januses." Well, I'm glad I decided to play on.

Game ID #62195

A few comments near the end...

25. Kb1 Je3 [I was afraid of 25…. Ra1+]

26. Qf3 [pure panic & blunder, due to unexpected fork. Better is 26. Qe1.]

26…. Nxf3
27. Jxf3 Qc5
28. Rc1 Nc4 [bad move, helping White get back some material.]

29. Rxc4 Jxc4
30. bxc4 Qb4+
31. Kc2 Qxc4+
32. Kd2 Ra2+
33. Ke3 [White K is running scared, & knows it.]

33. … Qb3+
34. Kf4 O-O-O
35. Ji5 g5+
36. Kg3 [Ah, a little haven for rest at last.]

36. … Rg8
37. Jxj7+ [A little spite check to feel good going down fighting at least.]

37. … Kj8
38. Ji5 [Threatens mate on 39. Jxh7 #.]

38. … Qf7
39. j4 h6 [A blunder, allowing mate in 2. The strange powers of the Januses.]
40. Ji6+ Ki8
41. J5j7#

I think it would be a good idea if everyone "invites" your chess friends from those other sites to play a game of Gothic Chess here on BrainKing. You can give them the "Game of the Month" link which is http://www.geocities.com/bow_of_odysseus/gotm.html which should get them interested in Gothic Chess.

Will you do this Terry?

Sure, Ed. In fact, I've already brought one gameknot friend from England here -- bdk1. I'll try some others then.

Great, Jestone I see you are a big Janus Chess Fan! And I know that we need a possibility to download the finished games!

Ed, my favorite page to introduce Gothic is your page "So why change chess?"
http://www.geocities.com/bow_of_odysseus/why_change.html
I liked the historical background, plus the 2 photographs of the Gothic sets.

Cool with me then, send them that link :)

I will present you two short nice Janus Games of the last time I have played outside Brainking without comments:

[Mod: Bauer=Pawn | Turm=Rook | Springer=Knight | Läufer=Bishop | Janus=Janus | Dame=Queen | König=King]

Kreuzer Uwe – Rühl Klaus
Freie E-Mail-Partie 2002

1. Bauer e2 - e4
1. Bauer e7 - e5
2. Läufer d1 - g4
2. Janus b8 - c6
3. Springer h1 - g3
3. Springer c8 - d6
4. Bauer f2 - f3
4. Läufer d8 - h4
5. Janus b1 - c3
5. Bauer f7 - f5
6. Bauer e4 x f5
6. Springer d6 x f5
7. Springer c1 - b3
7. Läufer h4 x g3
8. Bauer h2 x g3
8. König e8 - b8 Turm a8 - c8
9. Springer b3 - a5
9. Janus c6 - d8
10. Janus c3 - b5
10. Janus d8 - e6
11. Janus b5 x a7
11. Koenig b8 - a8
12. Dame f1 - b5
12. Springer f5 - d6
13. Dame b5 - a4
13. Bauer b7 - b5
14. Janus a7 x b5
14. Springer d6 x b5
15. Springer a5 - c6
15. König a8 - b7
16. Dame a4 x b5
1:0

Rühl Klaus - Kreuzer Uwe
Freie E-Mail-Partie 2002


1. Bauer e2 - e4
1. Bauer h7 - h5
2. Läufer d1 x h5
2. Janus i8 x e4
3. Springer h1 - g3
3. Janus e4 - f6
4. Janus b1 - c3
4. Bauer e7 - e6
5. Springer c1 - d3
5. Läufer g8 - i6
6. Dame f1 - e2
6. Janus b8 - c6
7. König e1 - b1 Turm a1 - c1
7. Janus f6 x c3
8. Bauer d2 x c3
8. Läufer d8 - f6
9. Janus i1 - h3
9. Springer c8 - b6
10. Janus h3 - f4
10. König e8 - b8 Turm a8 - c8
11. Janus f4 x i7
11. Springer h8 - g6
12. Janus i7 - e3
12. Janus c6 - b5
13. Springer g3 - e4
13. Springer b6 - a4
14. Janus e3 - d1
14. Läufer i6 x h5
15. Dame e2 x h5
15. Bauer d7 - d5
16. Springer e4 x f6
16. Bauer g7 x f6
17. Bauer f2 - f4
17. Bauer c7 - c5
18. Läufer g1 - e3
18. Bauer c5 - c4
19. Springer d3 - f2
19. Turm c8 - c6
20. Bauer f4 - f5
20. Springer a4 x c3
21. Bauer b2 x c3
21. Turm c6 - a6
22. Springer f2 - d3
22. Bauer c4 x d3
23. Bauer c2 x d3
23. Janus b5 x d3
24. Turm c1 - c2
24. Dame f8 - a3
0:1

Thank you, Whisperz for the legend

Hi, Felix! Yes, I got your question about Professor McFarland; unfortunately, I am not acquainted with him (even though the web page I referred you to regarding the opposition was part of his Finite Mathematics chess course - what a cool coincidence!) By the way, if you go to my profile and then to my list of finished games, you can play through the game via BrainKing's interface.

I'm "Juan Grande" on IYT. I'm working on all of my opponents (other than jestone, who's already here) to play Gothic Chess on BrainKing.com.

yeah, i just found out that IYT limits non-payers to 25 moves a day... so you cant finish games fast... so for now, i would rate brainking as one of the better server-based game sites around right now. Except that it is down at around Zero Dark Hundred [12 midnight] EST nearly every day.

Site owner to figure out how to update without switching off the site for a while?

The German Janus Chess Championship was happening in Saarbrücken 14.-16.03.2003.It was played with a time control of twenty minutes and nine rounds.The champion has been Stephan Becking (Anderssen St.Ingbert),the second and the third place IM Viesturs Meijers and IM Leonid Milov.The comlete results you can find here:

http://www.saarlorluxopen.de/freizeitmesse/frei2003/index.htm

or you come to the JanusChess-Homepage:

http://www.janusschach.de

[Mod: Note both sites are in German not essential but it helps :)]

and the 25-move limit is down from 40 when i first started in IYT 6-7 months ago. since i only play 4-5 reg chess there now, i didn't notice the reduction.

I just finished a game with our esteemed moderator (Whisperz) that shows how powerful a J can be on a relatively open board. It is Game #76758.

I was wondering if the 2003 Championship should be made an online event this year? Traditionally the national is played over the board in Philadelphia. Also, the entrance fee from previous years has been $50, with 50% of all collected fees going to the winner, 25% to the second place finisher, 10% going for the brillancy prize of best game, and the rest to the federation.

I would like everyone's thoughts on this.