... reminds me to Janus where I am not good at all. Janus players appear mostly strong to me even if their rating is low. I don´t like the strong bishop arrow effects too much.

FRC 960 is introduced. It will make brainking.com more popular. I will feel homeless in that game, but I am sure it is fantastic for some uf us.

Gothic Chess is not (felt, when playing) more complex, it´s both infinite, but GC is broader. in the same moment Chess 64 is deeper. It´s harder to follow a good game as visitor. At the beginning I felt the same as you. But now I can blow away the very most all-games-players on this server even when sleeping despite I am only a tournament ELO 1580 Chess Player (this is about 2000 typically claimed ELO-points in chess forums). I would claim Gothic Chess is more like real life, the thoughts are not too abstract and freaky, it´s all about mobility despite the tactics can overwhelme somebody at the beginning. But if both players have the same level (round about) then they will see both the same things, Gothic Chess is often much easier than the deep, deep game of chess that looks so plain compared to GC. I stopped playing chess some years ago, all those eager boys bored me, whyever, I play Gothic, I hope it gets en vogue. Maybe chess is better, but it´s not attractive for me to look for a weak pawn all he time.

http://brainking.com/game/Tournaments?trg=6703&tri=25674&trnst=0

Watchers don´t need to be logged in.

I gave him some tips how to play. Maybe he can need it. ;-)

<Or does knopp just have the same name ? ;-)
I accepted the challenge and my plan is to totally destroy his positions to make him love Gothic Chess. >:-) I had a last chess tournament rating of ELO 1600, so probably I will ask somebody for help. It can be higher now, but still too low, I am afraid.

Who is that Golden horseman ? A chess player.

King August II The Strong (German August II der Starke, Polish August II Mocny) (May 12, 1670 - February 1, 1733) was an influential Saxon nobleman and monarch. He held the titles Elector of Saxony and King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Born in Dresden, Saxony, August was the son of John George III Wettin who was born in 1647 to the house of Wettin. He was the Elector of Saxony, one of the electors of the Holy Roman Empire. His tropps defeated the Turks at Vienna which marked the end of their invasion in Europe.

August´s mother was Anne Sophie of Denmark. In 1694, he became Elector of Saxony as Prince-Elector Friedrich August I. von Sachsen. Following the death of the Polish king John III Sobieski, August was converted to Catholicism and elected king of Poland in 1697 with the help and support of Russia and Austria. The legality of the election was questioned by some Poles.

As a result of defeats in the war with Sweden and the pro-Swedish party in Poland, August had to abdicate in 1706 in favour of Stanis³aw Leszczyñski. But after the Swedish defeat in the Battle of Poltava, he was reintroduced as King of Poland in 1709. One of his sons, Friedrich August II. followed him first as Elector of Saxony , then as August III of Poland, King of Poland.

August II was called August the Strong for his bearlike strength and also for his numerous offspring. It is sometimes written that he sired 365 children. Although this figure would be extremely difficult to verify, August II did father a very large number of illegitimate children, the most famous of whom was Maurice de Saxe (with Aurora von Königsmarck), the brilliant French military commander.

He successfully set out to discover the secret of the "White Gold", as the porcelain he produced in Dresden and Meissen was called. He also gathered many of the best architects and painters from all over Europe in Dresden, and his rule marks the beginning of Dresden's development as a leading centre of technology and art. August's body was buried in Poland --all but his heart, which is in Dresden castle.

Link "Eroeffnungen" Maybe you wanna have a look if this is okay on your screen.

C for Chancellor (German: Kanzler), A for Archbishop, German: kArdinal, Erzbischoff or jAnus.

yes, a bit Austrian or Vienna accent would be cool if this was possible some way on some phrases, but you must know yourself off course. You will be linked soon.

This was to be seen as understatement, I mean we could have 70, but I prefer Gothic.

www.gothicchess.de is already online, but not finished yet (and never will be really finished). It´s just there, to provide some infos in German also. Most players know the English language well enough, but it´s better to represent that the game is played in many countries, Germany has not many top chess players in 8x8, but chess in general is relatively popular. Gothic Chess as well. :-)

So far I haven´t heard of any plans of the US administration to avoid this. But you never know.
I don´t know how it is about aliens and others. All three parties, visitors, Ed and I have no problems with the site. By the way, for those who are alrady paying members, knight is enough, there are also other GC discussion forums, which are moe alive. This one her should be relighted, too. If newbies want to discuss anything, feel encouraged please.

GothicChess.de will be online very soon. It´s not yet ready to be watched, so it´s nowhere else "promoted" right now, it´s a private hobby site. The aim is to just build a site in German language and to show that there is another one, not only the original one alone ! At least as long as this is okay for everybody it uses much content of gothicchess.org and will link to the offers there, but maybe also to other ChessVariant Software. If the copyright owner of images and text content doesn´t want it to be copied, let me know. My goal is to make the game more popular in Germany and to demonsrate it´s advantages over Birds chess, other Capablanca variants and over 8x8 chess. I don´t feel too much as German base, but a good relation would be very best. It will be mainly just a translation of all content and it will also use the name Gothic Chess of course, I think this should be okay. I am rather familiar with intellectual property law and will recommend Gothic Vortex and the pieces from GothicChess.org. It´s not planned right now any soon, but I would like to feel free to add software like ChessV as link, also including the remark that this program can play evey Chess. I mean this program is absolutely legal for sure despite it can play Gothic Chess even without editor and without code change and it will always be much weaker than Vortex which is mainly promoted as Gothic Chess software. I have greatest respect in both, Ed and this author, so I don´t want to hear of any trouble between them even if some people for the beginning play with ChessV. They all will talk about Gothic Chess and heavy users buy the vortex later for sure.

Relatively new, yes, it´s there now for some months. There are about 100 active plugin writers for that open source Instant Messenger. I am a heavy Miranda user and I try nearly every new plugin and every plugin update (there are 308 plugins so far, the messenger can do just everything about messaging and keep your many contacts sorted), but I nether tried this Janus plugin. I mainly use the messenger for spam protection reasons with ICQ (spam robots have no chance because they have to answer a question to get through), to really keep the survey over my 1.000 local contacts (some known like family members, others I never talked to), I keep the survey with picures of them in the message window, mouse-over-tooltip-notes, history statistics and quick sorting on last seen date, seeing invisble users, such things. but I only use 40 plugins. Many plugins used by me have just the sense to improve the design, capture screenshots, or see who reads my status message when I am in away-mode. As said - the Janus plugin has NOTHING to do with JANUS CHESS, and I don´t see much sense in it, because it´s probably more fun to play on a game server. Also: The other side also must use the plugin - normally it´s a main sense of Miranda to connect everybody with everybody, no matter which client is prefered on which side.

Re: Miranda IM is just the very best Instant Messenger on this planet. It is open souce, smaller, faster, easier than Trillian or the native messengers. Miranda works with ICQ, AIM, MSN and all other popular networks, also QQ of course which is popular in Asia. So everybody is connectted with everybody via Instant Messaging. Currently 308 plugins are offered, they are what makes Miranda to be Miranda, the core program is very plain. Miranda offers perfect spam protection, contact list sorting, buddies survey and let´s you see invible users and much much more things. This plugin named Janus has nothing to do with Janus chess. The plugin just allows you to play Chess, Reverse, Corners, International checkers, Russian checkers and Pool checkers with other Miranda users. I am the most recent poster and know it rather well. I called it an offtopic remark. You see, Ed Trice, whereever you find positive remarks about Gothic Chess, they are most possibly written by me. I am a Miranda maniac. I use it only with ICQ, which is the by far most popular IM network in Europe. My number is 67351, not 9 digits like if you would register a number today. :-) Many people told me that they would like to buy my number. :-)

They accept www.paypal.at - not the most beautiful chess set in the world, but for about 39 euros, shipping included, it´s jours. For paypal you just need an Austrian giro account.

Do you prefer Janus over GothicChess.org ?

or 0-0-0, any statistics ? I catch me always using the short variant. It doesn´t bother me, just an observation.

If you mean me, no, it plays on a planet of its own. Smirf alrady participated this year.

In the country of my home, namely Germany, also, there is a truly huge discussion about not really complex patents (I didn´t say GC wasn´t complex) in the heavy internet users´ community which mainly consists of university students of young age, argueable the potential users of Gothic Vortex, despite patent laws are much different here. There will always be a way to play the game wihout caring about the patent, just because, for example, birds chess can lead to GC. The Gothic Chess Federation should see that as a good chance for even more popularity and via this way more sales of Gothic Vortex. My father is a patent attorney (not for informatics or chess). In a small talk he said to be rather sure to get a patent applied, he was not so sure about the chances of keeping it if anybody invests into a struggle. But, as said, the rules are much differnt, not comparable ... and the US economy is known to be innovative.

Width 10, height 8, yes variants, including random start positions if you like, and another program named ChessV even in the other row. Both have their advantages and can play a lot.

Yes, it already can play matches, but (like the participating engine) it still is a beta being
a crippled shareware version (2 euros via paypal), which might be fully enabled by purchasing keys. But Gothic Chess enabling keys still are not distributed, because of
some things have to be cleared before. See at:
http://www.chessbox.de/beta.html
at the "Project Chronicle" under 2004-Sep-29. The current version is 0.6.2.

Smirf is able to play a lot of 10x8 variants like Capablanca Random Chess
(with over 20000 starting arrays), Bird's array (very interesting, remark by editor), Capablanca's array,
Carrera's array and whatever you will setup yourself by hand. But, please
do not forget, it is also covering normal chess, Fischer Random Chess and
could overmore play with all kind of shuffled positions.

rescharn@gmx.net - somehow, he now only writes about an editor, but I myself had a beta version which could play some moves, maybe the offcial release will take some more weeks, I know that he is working on it. Sorry for the la-la-info ;-)

The author speaks English.

It is 2 Euros (paypal) donation-ware on chessbox.de, it was developed out of just a 10*8 PGN-Editor, but it is an engine now, it participated in the GC championship. With 8*8 only it is free.

In ChessV Henry Bird´s Chess from 1874 uses RNBCKQABNR, I don´t know if this is the right setting. The program is not comparable to Gothic Vortex 1.2, but it is very worth a download anyway. Sign up for being informed about new versions of this many variants open source sofware from Greg Strong. SMIRF is rather new and was finished the last minutes before the tournament. The author still sees a lot of potential to improve it. I play only GC as variant, he is crazy about 10*8 FRC.

wikipedia.org is the biggest encyclopedia on this planet. In 100 languages it offers high quality of information, at least in the English and German version which are already extremly popular. You yourself can edit information whenever you want, you don´t even need an account. So far Gothic Chess is included at least in the Portuguese, English and German version. Looking forward for French, Czech and Russian for example. ;-)