Sam has closed his piano and gone to bed ... now we can talk about the real stuff of life ... love, liberty and games such as Janus, Capablanca Random, Embassy Chess & the odd mention of other 10x8 variants is welcome too
For posting: - invitations to games (you can also use the New Game menu or for particular games: Janus; Capablanca Random; or Embassy) - information about upcoming tournaments - disussion of games (please limit this to completed games or discussion on how a game has arrived at a certain position ... speculation on who has an advantage or the benefits of potential moves is not permitted while that particular game is in progress) - links to interesting related sites (non-promotional)
Why don't we talk about something productive? I'll start: My experience with Gothic Vortex has mostly been getting smashed even at the lowest level. Now I'm trying starting the game with material odds and working from Queen and winning easily to lesser valued pieces and set it on a more difficult setting. This creates very exciting games. What is much more exciting and fun now is that I have a real chance at winning.
To add spice to the game I like to randomize the starting position too. As in Full chess aka Fischer random and chess960, you can start with many different positions. What works well with the program is sticking the king and rooks where they usually belong and randomize the other pieces. This gives 740 different setups. If you randomize all the pieces except that bishops are on opposite colors and king between rooks there are 84,000 different ways.