Why not 2.Ka3! ?

In fact when i posted this i was not sure about what i said, and i will look at it tomorrow.........

is only a draw if the single King can be positioned next to the other King ... in the open the queen will round up the King and kill him. Interestingly, if there are opposing blocked pawns they can, in most cases, be used by the K-Q to manuouvre the opposing King into a detonating position.

K vs K-Q-Q can always be made into a win for the dual Queens.

The example was K vs K-Q-Q which, as you say, is a win for the two queens if played accurately.

hi guys!are you furious of allways losing suicide chess games against arimakat (as me ;-) ) ; do you want to enhance your anti chess abilities?
Then, feel free to join the "team game" i gonna set up against arimakat; i wait a little to start it, its gonna begin in about a week
message me if interested!

Yes and in fact it's very easy to mate. Yesterday, it was 3:00 at midnight when i posted that it's a draw so i didn't know what i was talking about obviously, now that i see it again........

A question/clarification: If a King is threatened by a piece, then it can castle or not? As there is no check i assume it can right......?

Yes it can. Into, out of and through check are all possible. Clearly into would be a mistake

I don't see how not seeing your opponents piece setup can be a bad thing. If you know the rules beforehand you can adopt that into your strategy. Plus if you set up your pieces to fight for certain squares, while making sure you have no obvious or identifiable weaknesses, then if your opponent is attacking or fighting for those same squares you have an offensive/defensive scheme already in place, and if they are not you completely dominate those squares without a single move. The give/take is that your opponent gets other squares. Knowing this you c_a_n set up a formation that provides for offense and defence without seeing your opponents setup beforehand.

http://brainking.com/game/Tournaments?tri=14869

Round 2 has finally started. Winner gets a one year Rook membership. The money is in Fencer's hands waiting to be awarded. :) We have three people that I've played few times, one that knocked me out of the tournament, and two players I've never played. It looks like a good competitive round for all involved. Good luck to all of you and I hope for good games. After the tournament is over, I'll let Fencer know which of you wins the prize. If this rounds somehow ends in a tie, I'm not sure if the tournament will go to a third round or not. If it doesn't, those left in the tie will arrange a playoff of our own. If it does continue, then we'll await the results of such a round if it proves necessary.

Once again good luck to all, and bring extra batteries for your flashlights. :)

looking forward. your call
and don't forget - any "invincible" position
for black can't be too bad for white either ... ... ... ~*~

I think I might get hooked on this chess, and fight my way to the world championship!! (Do they have one yet? Maybe I'll set one up. = )

Well since last time nobody succedded, i will increase the prize..... So here is your chance to win a one year membership here, with a lot of effort of course........

The first one who will post at
Gothic Chess discussion board and only there, the correct answers to the above 4 questions, will win a 1 year Rook membership...........

The 4 questions are here.


***If there are no answers or any correct one until 10/02/2005, there will be no winner.......
***If someone posts more than 1 answer, then the accepted one, will be ONLY his last one. That means even if someone posts a correct answer before everyone, but posts another one later, not correct this time, he would not win as the accepted answer will be the last one. Even if anyone else hasn't answered correctly.......
***In the extremely rare case when there will be 2 or more correct answers at the exactly same time, the winner will be the one whose post will appear first at the Gothic Chess discussion board.
***I will post if there is a winner or not at 10/02/2005.

well there are a few things that can be done.. give less rating points for wins with white... or give ZERO points for a whtie win. another possiblity is to start more black pawns forward. Its pointless to play with black and i have zero respect for a person who only plays white. The game is obviously flawed and jsut look at teh win % between white and black. do you see disparity? if so than it needs to be fixed. If we dont than i guess we all need glasses!

When a person picks up a Fischer Random game from the waiting games board, he is allowed to see the positioning of the pieces before deciding to accept the game. As the person creating the game has no option which position he gets, might it be more fair leave the position a blank before acceptance as to discourage "Window Shopping"? I have no doubts the positions are all equal, otherwise Fischer would have had nothing to do with the game, let alone have created it, but just in the name of fairness, which has a nice name btw. = )

And guess what? I just went to start a new game, and the position was right before my eyes!!! Is there anyway to blank out dumb remarks??? = )

bobwhoosta: I second ... ... ~*~

Hardly corner chess guys.

but this is where the link apparantly takes you to!!

I am a supporter of the idea that if we do not evolve chess, it's only going to get worse. Opening theory is killing chess. After playing gothic and janus chess here, I am starting to conclude that standard chess is going to have to do more than shuffle the back rank in order to give it life. Anybody else have some thoughts here?

mahavrilla: I do have. Similar thoughts
have been expressend in 8 decades without the
doom coming indeed. Creativity will prevail. ~*~

My opinion is that opening theory is only destroying chess at the highest level. Admittedly, there are those instances where it somehow tarnishes the games of us non-godlike-beings, however I think they are few and in most instances theory actually helps a person to understand the strategies of an opening- theory in this sense being what it should: an explanation of the goals and strategies inherent in the openings with analysis, not just the analysis. However, even if it were the case that theory kills originality, Fischer Random provides for well over one hundred starting positions, each one with myriads of possible goals and strategies that you would never see in "just chess", making it necessary to develop your own theory in each game! In fact my favorite thing about one of my new favorite games is it enhances your positional evaluation skills, cause you need em!

Which do you guys think of Janus as compared to Gothic? Which is better?

mahavrilla: I believe that tempered capablanca chess appears
to have a higher potential than janus ... but the majority of games here
doesn't reflect all the strategic options properly, coffeehouse style mainly. ~*~

coffeehouse is my game baby!

The tournament is over. Two first place finishes for the championship. Congratulations Matarilevich and Caissus. Yo both took care of me. redsales was tough too. It looks like copying the final standings isn't going to work very well, so I'll supply the link too.
http://brainking.com/game/Tournaments?tri=14921

Section 1 BKR 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Points S-B (?) Order
1 Matarilevich 2465 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 10.0 47.0 1.
2 Walter Montego 2110 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 8.0 28.0 3.
3 redsales 2067 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 7.0 29.0 4.
4 Caissus 2078 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 10.0 47.0 1.
5 Mely 1848 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 5.0 11.0 5.
6 temo 1522 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2.0 0.0 6.
7 Nightstorm 873 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.0 0.0 7

I just noticed that in the final standings of the 2004 Third Quarter open that I finished behind in S-B points, but still ahead in the final placing. I guess I won and lost to the right people? :)
That's the second time that I've done better than the S-B placing would have me. I'm glad it's only used break ties. Even then, I can't say I like it much, but it does seem better than not using it at all. I wonder why the tournament didn't go to another round? Some of my tournaments continue on with the section winners and others just end with it tied. The tie here seems like a good result with so many players, but another round with them two only wouldn't be a bad thing either.

Thanks and congratulations Caissus

congrats to all players!

OK, OK, OK! Well done Mely. He finally brought me a loss. He's a perfect player. Have a look at the game if you like: http://brainking.com/game/ArchivedGame?g=651309

Matarilevich: I have and it doesn't let you make the move. To my oppinion, it does the right thing. I think the correct definition for a move is this:

a change in the position of one, or in a special case of castling, two, pieces on the board.

yes, passing is a kind of move but I think that's because WE call it a move. And that's because we do it in our own turn when we cannot make a legal MOVE!

So see, it's not that much of a move itself.

Tompark, your definition is a particular case of move and it´s only one consequence in standard chess, but in a cylindrical board or in other surface is not correct geometrically.

I am still rather beginner for this game and I wonder if we can apply without risk the book of the openings of the "standard" chess
to this variant "Extinction chess".
What do you think about it?

For the first 5-6 plies, i think it's safe.........

very safe, feel free to experiment with a4, h5 things that are off the wall in regular chess. But at the same time, tried and true openings work as well.

I considered to add 4 pawns and 2 gnus for white to the Maharajah Chess.

A gnu (sometime called wildebeast) is a compound piece of a knight (2/1 leaper) and a camel (3/1 leaper)

This still requires white to use its Maharajah for check mating black but it have at least some material to defend himself or to attack.

how about this, Fencer. If white can capture 2 pieces, he wins. It's just ridiculously easy the way it is now.

redsales: Even that is not possible with good play by black.

why not give both sides the standard set up only make both kings a maharajah?

Then games would last 200 moves to mate the King and that's not the main bad thing. The most ugly will be that 99% of games will be drawn!
Even if you give at the King just the Knight moves, the mate will be damn difficult even with a Queen...........

WhisperzQ: i totally agree, but at least it would be closer than now! The problem with this game is that it's really a training game to get the players to figure out the moves. It was not intended for FM-IM-GM class players!

redsales: i totally agree, but at least it would be closer than now!

No. It would be the same. The following moves for black destroy both games. The current one, and your suggestion......

1. Knight b8 - c6
2. Pawn d7 - d5
3. Queen d8 - d6
4. Pawn e7 - e5
5. Knight g8 - f6
6. Pawn a7 - a5
7. Rook a8 - a6
8. Rook a6 - b6
9. Bishop c8 - g4
10. Pawn e5 - e4
11. Queen d6 - e5
12. Bishop f8 - e7
13. 0-0
14. Rook b6 - b2
15. Rook f8 - a8
16. Rook a8 - a6
17. Rook a6 - b6
18. Rook b6 - b3
19. Pawn h7 - h5
20. Pawn g7 - g5
21. Knight f6 - h7
22. Queen e5 - d4

Now if the Maharajah is on a1 then:
23. Rook b2 - b1
24. Rook b3 - b2 MATE#

Else:
23. Queen d4 - d1 MATE#

Just remove black's Queen and perhaps we have a game.......Or give white 3 Maharajah's (2 Maharajah's loses too).........
But please remove the current ridiculous game. It's a shame that such game exist here, while other much better aren't........

How about giving the Maharajah multiple lives, like a video game character? He would have to be captured three times for Black to win.

Your suggestion is not well-defined. You don't say what will happen when black would capture the Maharajah..............

Then White would replace the Maharajah on any square. Of course, black would be free to move into check with either of his first two lives, enabling him to capture at least two pieces during the game, making it a bit more even.

Chessmaster1000: i mean closer in that it would result for more wins for white. You are right in that it doesn't change the fact that this is a "solved" game. I like the idea of removing the black queen.

BuilderQ: Your idea would unfortunately make it a sure-win for white. Once black's army moves a few lines, the Maharajah sacrifices itself and then attacks the black from behind giving him no chance ...

Another option is to increase the (lone) Maharajah's power by adding the camel move (3/1 jump). This is then tricky for black at the start as white can trap the King behind the pawns with the camel's extra reach while staying outside the pawns' attack.

Maybe Fencer can set this up as another variant ... call it Maharani (wife of a Maharajah).

enjoy :-)

http://brainking.com/game/ArchivedGame?g=698831

http://brainking.com/game/ArchivedGame?g=125085
I can't fully compete with the beauty of
your pattern, but okay - effective as well ... . ~*~

danoschek: From what Fencer has said on BK your not likely to either.

Please keep it on topic people.