<Gothic Vortex thinks about 17...Rg8 for 28 seconds searching up to 9 plies, and then has a fail low to this (+217 -> -30) so it turns to 17...i6 after 48 seconds. And it shows a +135 score after 1:25 for 17...i6 at 9 plies.

It looks like 17...i6?? was the collosal game-ending blunder. I cannot get my version of Vortex to play this move when I let it play Black. 17...h5 offers the best shot at holding the draw, since after the white Bishop retreats to set up a check by eventually revealing the Rook, the black king has ...Ki8 and then the new retreat square ...Kh7 with the h-pawn pushed.

I will have a new version of the opening book ready by Monday which will allow the program to evade this danger, as well as play some of your outstanding moves for white in the event the positions ever come up.

Nice game George!

Email me your address Ted, I will send you all the information in the mail. My email is GothicChessInfo@aol.com.

How does a person go about obtaining permission to hold an OTB Tournament;and perhaps becoming a Director? Is this possible for,say VA where I live?

I am also curious about the tourney. Will it be held there again soon?

What about the KC tourny?

Without doing any analysis OTB but only OMB(over my brain), why white has to play 16.Bxg4 and not 16.exf4 ? What black should play after 16.exf4 ?

Vortex 1.0.7 or newer, will be the engine that Gold and Nuclear version will have?

Taking the Archbishop leads to a "Mate in 10" announcement when I let Vortex run overnight.

Vortex 1.0.7, which has not been released yet, will not take the Archbishop after only 20 seconds on my 2.8 Ghz computer.

The move 15...exf4! wins for black.

15...exf4 16. Bxg4 fxg4 and white's position is becoming exposed faster than any attack will come forth.

Nice analysis, but what about 15.Ai3 ? Is it a good move or black has a defence? Difficult to answer i know, as there are millions of options but my instinct,without doing any analysis, says that there must be a defence.

But i think it's better for G.V not to take the Archbishop. With this move i gain 2 VERY IMPORTANT things: The open j file that is a "killing" file for black and the open d1-j7 diagonal, which is a "killing" diagonal too. I think these 2 worth way more than my Archbishop. Does newer versions of G.V play this capture too?

1. f2f4 d7d5 2. g2g3 g7g6 3. d2d4 Nb8c6 4. c2c3 Ni8h6 5. h2h3 Bh8f6?!

This is the so-called "Bishop Lunge" problem in the earlier versions of Vortex. The program gets a bonus for being able to reach more squares with its Bishops, so it deploys to the third rank almost in every case. The natural 5...Bg7 seems better.

6. Ag1h2 e7e6

Another shallow search error. 6...Nf5 is much better. The intention is to play ...Nd6 if provoked with pawn play later, perhaps hitting on a white Bishop on e4 if white traded pawns via a push to e4 and bishop recapture. Black also has a counterplay trap: 6...Nf5 7. g4? Bh4! hitting on the white Chancellor. No matter where the Chancellor moves next, 8...Ng3+ is deadly.

7. Ni1j3 Ag8e7?

I like making the exposed Black King a sore point after an e-pawn push. 7. b3 intending the flank Bishop check with 8. Ba3+ would work good for white. After 7. Nj3 Black should simply play 7...Be7 to clear off f6, prepare ...Nf5 and ...Ng7, deploy a better pawn perimeter, and only then, castle.

8. g3g4 Bf6g7?!

There is nothing wrong with white's 8th move, but black should have played 8...Bh4 for some slight counterplay.

9. Bh1f3 f7f6

On 9. g5 black gets the upper hand with 9...Nf5 10. Bf3 h5! After white's 9. Bf3, black has to be careful about castling. 9...0-0 10. g5! Ng8 11. e4! dxe4 12. Bxj7+ Kj8 13. Be2 does leave black with a tough choice. 10...Nf5 leads to the same attack for white. Black's 9...f6 is not best, as the odd-looking 9...Nj5 may do the trick! White can't provoke with 10. i4 since ...Nh4 trades knights favorably. If 10 g5 to cutoff the Queen/Archbishop combo on the dark diagonal, then ...h5 solves all of black's worries (10. i4? hxi4 11. hxi4? Rh8! 12. ixj5 Rxh2 13. Nxh2 Af5 looks odd, but black is better.)

will it be there again?

The last really big OTB event was in Kansas City at Bartel Hall, over 3100 players.

Nuclear will probe its endgame databases in RAM. For example, imagine a R+P vs. R ending. Hit "at a leaf node" from a great distance, the evaluation routine cannot search it. The program makes basically a "0-ply guess" at the value of the position, then reports this score back down the tree.


R+P = +600, R = -500, so it will score the position as +100.

The positions might be a dead draw, so the "real score" should be 0. The program, if it is up a pawn many moves from this leaf node, should avoid swapping into it. Instead, the program will play for it, "thinking" it is up one pawn.

Now imagine your Pawn can be on any of 60 squares, your king on any of the 79 remaining, and your Rook on the 78 left from there. The opponent's Rook can be on any of the other 77 squares, and the king will be on no more than any of 76 squares, with about 64 on average due to all the checks that can take place. That would be about 1,821,980,160 positions, x 2 since either side can move gives you 3,643,960,320 positions with just R + P vs. R!

How many of those 3.6 billion positions do you think Vortex can "guess" right with a 0-ply search? Not many.

Now imagine instead of +100 for being up one pawn, Vortex could return +6320 for mate in 80 moves, or 0 for a dead draw, or -6285 for being mated in 115 moves!

This information is PERFECT, no EVALUATION has to be "guessed", and this will greatly effect the way the program will play, even from a great distance!

There are roughly another 3.6 billion Q+P vs. Q positions, and Arch + pawn vs. Arch, Arch + pawn vs. Chancellor, etc, etc.

What you have is about 300 billion positions in a huge database probed in RAM being delivered to the search engine.

There is no way to create an effective buffer with less than 8 GB of RAM, and I would even recommend 16 GB. Macintosh systems now ship with 8 GB on some of their boxes. 64-bit 8x opterons are at the same stage I believe.

This type of knowledge needs RAM, RAM, and more RAM. But it would be soooo cool.

This software is MONTHS away from completion, not YEARS. The databases are already computed and are disk resident. Writing routines to probe it in RAM has never been done, and this is the last step.

Are the OTB tournaments only in Phil or are there some in other large cities as well?

Why does it require so much? The common amount of RAM now is around 1 GB or so, maybe 2 for a high end system. My computer only has 4 slots for RAM, I would have to have 4 x 2GB strips for that.

So Nuclear is a few years down the line?

8 GB will be a very common configuration in time :) Just because the software is designed to exceed current capacities doesn't mean it will always be that way. Remember, this version of the software is still being written. When it is finished, it will be a monster.

lol, who has 8 GB of RAM?

I played a quick game against Gothic Vortex 1.03 at 30 seconds per move(Me at 20 minutes per 40 moves).
At move 15 i played an astonishing anti-computer sacrifice that Vortex accepted it, although this time, i think it wasn't so happy for it's position after having the material advantage, so i can praise G.V for knowing what was goind on at the game, although not completely.


Me Vs G.V 1.03
1. f2f4 d7d5
2. g2g3 g7g6
3. d2d4 Nb8c6
4. c2c3 Ni8h6
5. h2h3 Bh8f6
6. Ag1h2 e7e6
7. Ni1j3 Ag8e7
8. g3g4?! (It seems that i'm opening my position too much, but actually i just hoped for the move G.V played while i think Bh4 would have caused me many problems.)

8...Bf6g7?!
9. Bh1f3 f7f6
10. Ce1g2 O-O?! (Perhaps another move that G.V should have avoided. Now i have a direct attack. It should have played something, waiting for me, to see where my King will go. If it castled o-o-o then i will be in a very bad form since my attack would paralyse and my King would be in danger.)
11. i2i4! (Attack and not castle!)
11...e6e5
12. e2e3 Bc8e6
13. h3h4 f6f5
14. g4g5 (Now it's getting even harder for black. Is there any defence? Probably yes.)
14...Nh6g4
15. Ah2i3!! (Probably this doesn't worth 2 exclamation marks, but in a game agaist a computer it worths.)

15...Ng4xi3? (I don't know if i have a forced win, but it's too tough for black to find a defence. And especially now that G.V has enough moves that it's difficult to search with a high efficiency.)
16. Bf3xj7+ Ki8j8
17. j2xi3 i7i6
18. Nj3i5! Ae7xg5 (Well i was happy to see this. I thought that something was wrong about my attack but hopefully the desperation of G.V showed me that i was winning.)
19. f4xg5 Bg7xi5
20. Bj7xi6+ Kj8i8
21. Rj1j8+! (Nice! Easy tactics and a well known pattern of course.)
21...Ki8xj8
22. Cg2j2+ Bi5j4
23. Cj2xj4+ Kj8i8
24. Cj4j6+ Ki8i7
25. Bi6xh7 Rh8xh7
26. Qd1i6+ Ki7h8
27. Qi6xh7# 1-0

Requirements: click here

Maybe this is a good time, then, to have a preview of the minimum requirements for this next, high-end version?

I see at the bottom of the page that Gothic Vortex will not run at Windows ME.
This is strange since i have ME and it runs?!?!

Or do you mean that the GOLD edition or the NUCLEAR will not run at ME? Damn! Why?

What is the reason for that?

An excellent discussion of the value of the pieces and rationale is given in Andy Soltis' book "Karl Marx Plays Chess"

I was a Mac programmer for decades, from October 1984 until Mac OS X made me a dinosaur in 2001. I am in the process of divorcing the gui from the engine so that it would be an easy port to OS X. If you know any Mac OS X gui developers, please let me know.

Got a version for Macs? ;-)

Well, you can download Gothic Vortex for free here:

Download Vortex

You can try everything you want for 30 days.

No, I mean a practice board, where I can set up positions and make a few moves and see what it leads to. For example, there is one here for Pente (this link might not work if you are not a member..not sure). You can test out lines etc.

Sure, take over for white, you can mate in 268.

click here

Is there an online practice board anywhere?

I am working on some new graphics for the next version of Vortex to be released.

click here to see the proposed new board image.

Chess with a twist: All pieces come to life and humorously animate the "battle" that ensues when one piece takes another. There is a different animation for each type of ", yes of curse i play it in mi old commodore64 then in my Amiga Great original game.

:)

Anyone remember "battle chess"? An electronic game that assessed the present value of pieces when they met and decided which killed which.

Bonsoir, mes petits loups !

I think it would be helpful if people post their own values on the board for the pieces. Here are the ones I put in Gothic Vortex

Pawn = 100

Knight = 275 with 20 pawns, 255 with 0 pawns.
Exact value = 250 + pawns.

Bishop = 310

Rook = 530 with 0 pawns, 440 with 20 pawns.
Exact value = 530 - (pawns * 3).

Archbishop = 690 with 20 pawns, 650 with 0 pawns.
Exact value = 650 + (pawns * 2).

Chancellor = 860, unchanging

Queen = 900 with 20 pawns, 960 with 0 pawns.
Exact value = 960 - (pawns * 3).

These values were chosen carefully, but I still think they can be changed.

For example, compare how Rook + Pawn will be traded for Bishop + Knight as the pawn count varies. At the beginning of the game, R + P = 540, and B + N is 585. You don't want to give up a B + N for R + P early on, because your two minors are developed an in play, while the Rook is most likely just sitting there after having castled.

A Bishop will not trade itself for 3 pawns unless there is some other form of compensation. Notice a Knight will always trade iteself for 3 pawns, or 2 pawns + "heavy positional damage". Some of you may have seen Vortex tossing its Knight to do this already. So far, I think this is strong behavior.

Also, 2 Knights cannot mate a lone king in the absence of pawns. So, a Rook is more valuable than 2 Knights with pawns = 0 (530 for Rook, 510 for 2 Knights).

This "simple" approach makes the program appear to have endgame intelligence. It will prefer to have a Rook over 2 Knights heading into the endgame, and it can direct this play from a distance with the properly chosen values.

If others want to post their "ideal values" I would be happy to review them.

That's what Thad wrote to me. I've asked one person so far, but he declined unless it becomes absolutely necessary to have another moderator. Thad's a little quicker than me with the editor's eraser and I told him a few things to go along with my thinking, but he's still able to make the call when the need arises.
I'll still tally responses to that previous post and try to keep a list of possible moderators. If Thad or I have to leave or stop using this site for some reason, it will be helpfull to have replacements in mind. So far no one has written me about nominating someone or suggesting themselves for the job. On the board itself, Ed Trice has been nominated and has been dished on. It might take a few weeks to see how it goes. Just the two us might be enough. It didn't work too bad when I was doing it by myself. Had I not had both computers breakdown and then my truck breakdown 300 miles from home, I might've not been missing so much during those two or three weeks when it all came to a head and would have been available to read the posts and monitor the situation better. Oh well, the water has flown by the bridge and this is where we're at now. :)

no ugh...really dont think I want to be on this team:)

Wilderbeast: are you reinstated?

some like to flirt...some like to argue....some like to play gothic chess.
the current combination of moderators will suffice I think.

What you've done to my square counting idea is not what I had in mind. I'm looking at the numbers that you've posted and figuring you must've pretended each piece was on every square on the board and totaled the square counts that way. That's almost exactly what the Safe Check deal is. What I am thinking is the relative strength of the pieces as to where the will normally be deployed. Rare will it be that one will choose to play to the corner or edge a piece that is greatly lowered in movement there unless forced to do so. Since a Rook is equally mobile on every square it might be the exception to that. As for your conclusion that a Bishop is weaker than a Knight doing the counting this way, did you take into consideration that a Bishop can only travel on half the squares? Perhaps you should double its count for a more accurate estimate. Or some other way. Hmmm, it seems like the pieces that can move diagonal are the ones that have the most variable count and really are stronger when placed towards the center of the board. The pieces that have the Knight component without the diagonal move vary less. As soon as they're two squares from the edge they're at full range. OF course, two squares from the edge can be considered in the middle of the board. Just one square from the edge and they have full range minus two squares. A Knight having just one way of moving, has slow going on the larger board. The Knight's move itself is pretty handy when in close and has the benefit of not being able to be blocked.

I'm thinking that game experience and judgment might give a player a better guide than simple assigning a value to pieces. It's still nice to have a chart with the relative values just to assist in making trades and planning ahead. Especially for beginning players a chart can be of great help. Since the strengths and weaknesses of each piece change from move to move as the game progresses a better approach has to be to learn the game and get more experience. Least ways that's what I'm trying to do. I almost have the hang of how each piece works and am getting better at making longer range plans and detecting my opponent's intentions. The two extra pieces are quite strong and make the game more volitile the regular Chess even taking into account the larger board size. The one constant that remains is the King and the object of the game. Having more power on the board has definitely got to put him in more peril. Why range the whole board to count squares when one usually just focuses on the opponent's King and can concentrate one's forces in his area? If the game survives to the end game stage it is going to be more of a wide body Chess game than a completely different game that exists in the opening and middle parts.

He had two chances and was conspicuously useless.

I believe he already had his chance and it did not work out - this board has already been through enough, so there is no point (in my opinion) in bringing in a moderator who already has issues with other people - it is just asking for trouble.

:) I think that would make a good mix.. don't you think.. ;)

I nominate Ed Trice for moderator

A piece's value is not merely a function of its mobility. A board can be loaded with pawns that impede a Bishop of the same color, making it a "very bad" Bishop and a piece you would trade for a Knight immediately. One long series of pawn swaps, and now the Bishop might be poised to dominate the Knight in the ending.

As I discussed in my paper here there are values other than the "mobility/safe check" that also factor into the equation. On page 90 of this paper:



There are a few things worthy to note at this point. These are not exact ratios universally accepted by the chess-playing public. The work of Taylor in 1876 provided a foundation upon which players could experiment and adjust the relative merits of the pieces over the years. In this respect, Taylor’s equations will compute semiconditional values for the pieces (Katsenelinboigen, 1997, p. 53). In this fashion, we differentiate these data from conditional, unconditional, partially conditional, and positional values that are computed in a variety
of ways by the contemporary chess master at various stages of the game.

This is explained in more detail in the paper, and in my reference to Dr. Katsenelinboigen's book.

<>The Safe Check method seems like a rather hard way to figure the strength and power of >each piece. Why not just compare how many squares each piece can cover in one move? >Obviously some of the piece's positions when doing the counting will have a great impact >on the total, but some sort of average can be figured into it.

Doing this we have:

Chancellor= 1720
Queen= 1672
Rook= 1280
ArchBishop= 832
Knight= 440
Bishop= 392

So we see that something is wrong. A bishop can't be weaker than Knight. What is wrong?
It's the method, that underestimates many things. Of course safe check method has it's weak parts too, but it seems it is a better estimator for the piece values.

But a very hard question is what really is a piece's value? How we should define the "piece value"? What's the meaning behind this? Can anyone find a good definition of the piece value?


>It seems like the value that is assigned in regular Chess should be adjusted to the game >situation. That's what I do when deciding to make a trade or not. Sometimes a well placed >Knight is worth almost a Rook.

Deep Junior 8.0 knows this well, after the game with Kasparov:-)
Here it played Rae8?!:
r4rk1/pb1n1ppp/2qN4/4p1Pn/2p1P3/2Q1BN2/P
P3P1P/2KR3R b - - 0 17

>Especially when the position is blocked with lots of Pawns and both sides have a >Bishop to keep the Pawns guarded.

The Safe Check method seems like a rather hard way to figure the strength and power of each piece. Why not just compare how many squares each piece can cover in one move? Obviously some of the piece's positions when doing the counting will have a great impact on the total, but some sort of average can be figured into it. It seems like the value that is assigned in regular Chess should be adjusted to the game situation. That's what I do when deciding to make a trade or not. Sometimes a well placed Knight is worth almost a Rook. Especially when the position is blocked with lots of Pawns and both sides have a Bishop to keep the Pawns guarded.

A Rook's total number of squares that it can move to on an empty board doesn't change regardless of where placed. Always 14. On the 8 X 10 board a Rook has 16 squares to move to regardless of placing. All the rest of the pieces gain squares to move to as they get away from the edge of the board. The Chancellor and Archbishop are interesting to compare to each other this way. A Chancellor can have as few as 18 squares and as many as 24 on the 8 X 10 board. The Archbishop as few as 9 and as many as 22. It seems from just casually looking at this analysis that the Archbishop is a piece to try to get into the center of the board and keep it there or near there, and the Chancellor can stay away from the center and still have good range. More Rooklike than Knightlike. Both of them are trouble against the opponent's King. The Archbishop seems to work real well against the King when the position is cramped with its ability to move diagonal and get around the Pawns with its Knight move too.
This is what I've figured out so far. Still learning. :)

Now that was a very nice post Walter.. :) Kudo's to you..

It turns out that I can change the moderators. You've been relieved of your duties bwildman. Seems like you wanted me to do this, so there it is. If not, let me know. As for danoschek, I never wanted him back on this particular board while I was a moderator, so I will leave your decision to ban him intact bwildman.

This being a 24 hour medium, and me only going online for an hour or two a day except on somedays when I'm here all day or other times when I'm away for four days, it means the board isn't covered or moderated continually. A few of my Gothic Chess playing opponents might want to take the moderator's job. One or two more, especially in the right time zones or work shifts could keep the board covered over half the time and then there won't be a need to change it to having all posts approved by me. I don't like that way of doing it, but if most of the users and posters to this board would rather have me read incoming posts before they appear on the board, let me know. I can change the setting to that and see how it goes. As I've stated before, I think it will ruin the character of this board, but it will certainly cut down or out the flaming and cussing.
Also, if you'd like to be a moderator, or know someone that might make a good moderator, send me a message. I have a couple in mind and will run it by them in a few days. It's mostly a thankless job, and you must control yourself from being too controlling of others.
Freedom is something you can't have unless you're willing to let others have it.
I prefer working with people that share my philosophy on censorship and don't mind seeking a consensus on making changes to the settings or to the people allowed to post. Though as it currently stands, I have the power to do as I please until there's popular uprising and the overlord steps in to rectify the situation. I'm trying to be a benevolent dictator and just let things flow. Please don't assume that my attitude is one of benign neglect. I may not be online as much as some of you, but I will eventually respond to things that are envelope pushing or rude in nature. Debating and arguing are fine by me, fighting isn't.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled broadcast.

danoscheck is both hidden and temporarily banned till the head moderator signs on...it will be Walters descision,after that.

Yes, Safe Check assumes that pawns retain the same value on all sizes of boards, while other pieces degrade in power. With a large enough board, pawns would be worth more than queens! But I guess for the Gothic or regular chess board, practical values are obtained.