jerom: well, as I have told before, it is hard to meet there someone. There is no jour fix, where attempts to find other player could be bundled. I suggested to enter at full hours, but even you refuted such a simple proposal ...

is there any voulenteer for gothic chess? it is free for an account!

sorry, but I am not a server, I just play there. so I can`t.

jerom: Because it is hard to meet there someone, I would suggest to try a logon there at full hours. The chances will grow then to find there more than only yourself.

http://www.gothicchesslive.com/all-players-games.php
gothic chess is a nice variant to! maybe some people want to join the site?

I have just created a Capablanca Random Chess tournament (Capablanca!). Single elimination. 1 win match. 7 days per move and standard vacation. Only rated players.

Nevermind I see now Capablanca Randomized Chess.

What is CRC exactly?

CryingLoser:
Thank you for this comment. But I simply have tried to publish a downwards compatible extension to chess to give a durable drosophila to chess programming. If it should be detected to be interesting and playable also for human players, the better it is. In any case 10x8 chess will become more and more interesting to the public, simply because Chancellor and Archbishop are the logical completion to the traditional chess piece set. This is, because the three basic piece gates of Knight, Bishop and Rook therein are completed by all their paired combinations.

SMIRF Engine: CRC is without doubt the highest form of serious chess, and special variants like Gothic or Embassy are only subsets of CRC.
Reinhard, i like your research in this difficult area and wish you all the best!

CryingLoser:
Of course it is interesting to read that top players are interested in playing such 10x8 Chess games based on Capablancas extended piece set. If Mr. Fischer is remembering his own invention Chess960 (he himself has named it "Fischerandom"), he should be highly interested in playing CRC (Capablanca Random Chess). But as usual sponsors have their influence in the variant selection for attractively honoured chess match events.

Have from Ed Trice that Susan is indeed the alternative to Fischer.

There exist a Gothic Chess game Ed vs Susan, have
only the first moves

1. d4 h6 2. Nh3 g6 3. g3 d5 4. Nc3 c6 5. e4 dxe4 6. Bxe4 Qxd4 7. Cd3 Qf6 8.Cd8 Ng7 9. Bf4 Nd7
10. Qxd7 e5 11. O-O-O

Interesting, that in 10x8 Chess, since there are
more pawns, there are more possibilities for a gambit - a player can sacrifice two pawns for
attack.

An interesting read: scroll down to Oct 12th in the blog. http://www.susanpolgar.blogspot.com/

I've heard rumour that Susan Polgar is the second alternative to Fischer.

For those on slow Broadband or dialup ... the file is 22M.

Personally, I would love to witness such an event. I just don't think Fischer is the right opponent for Karpov, as much as I would love to see him play once more.

Pedro Martínez: The effort or the event?

pawnme: I just read it - what a waste of time.

Anyone read the latest:
http://www.gothicchess.com/Fischer_Karpov_Match_01.pdf

Anyone up for a game or two? I've posted sixteen, open to all in the waiting games area.

And just for you George, they're Fischer Clocked timed. :) Take a pair and let's duke it out.

Since i'm a poor Pawn and can't edit my post please instead of the wrong </b> that destroys the appearance of my post, put a </i> instead....

After some time that i had to concentrate on some reading/studies i'm free to post again:-)

Some short notes:
ChessCarpenter:
M_TAL on GothicChessLive.com beat the new Vortex 2 times (after losing a few games).

A few = 1 :-)
Against the new G.Vortex i have 2 wins and one loss, yet i have the feeling that i will lose every single game i will play against it....
It has become VERY strong indeed!


You will remember he was ChessMaster1000 on here, as well as WhiteTower, ChicagoBulls, and maybe 1 or 2 others.

I was never WhiteTower....
Just Chessmaster1000->Pythagoras->Chicago Bulls
while initially when i came here, as a pawn, with a restricted number of games i could play, i played the Gothic Chess games of my father's account (WhiteShark).....


WalterMontego:
What's a Chancellor and Archbishop?

Chancellor=One meaning:the chief minister of state in certain parliamentary governments, as in Germany; prime minister; premier.
Archbishop=a bishop of the highest rank who presides over an archbishopric or archdiocese.

LOL! :-) Nice to see you again.....

ChessCarpenter: As interesting as the games are, links to the the site referenced are consiered inappropriate on this site. In future please refrain from sending patrons from this site to there.

Thanks you.

Walter Montego: Two of my favorite endgames on the 10x8 board are Archbishop vs. Bishop + Knight, which is a mate in 202 for the Archbishop, shown here:

http://www.gothicchess.com/endings/kakbn/game.htm

And Chancellor and Pawn vs. Chancellor, a mate in 140, shown here:

http://www.gothicchess.com/endings/kcpkc/game.htm

Incredibly complex endings that really let you appreciate whatever your favorite 10x8 game is that gets you to these points. Even more interestingly, programs cannot play these endings properly without these precomputed tablebases. Strong human players have a better chance of winning the endings more rapidly than programs that do not have the tablebases, another one of the ironies of the world of computer programs.

ChessCarpenter: This mind numbing, brute force number crunching is the complete antithesis of why I play games. There's not an ounce of romanticism or sportsmanship to it. I suppose it has it's place in the realm of theory and understanding of games without chance in them. I'm glad to hear the numbers are so large as to make it more or less impossible to know every single outcome possible. There's other ways to do it besides knowing every move possible. A set of rules for each group of remaining pieces might use less memory, but I have the feeling that's not the case in this instance. Have you tried this approach? And then there's SMIRF Engine's point about just what good will such tables be if the game is already decided when it gets to that point? It's amazing that just having the extra 16 squares and the addition of four pieces on the board makes the numbers get so much larger. Regular Chess itself has very big numbers when one wants to count all the moves possible. What about the 10 × 10 board for Grand Chess? It uses the same pieces as Embassy Chess. Will the number be slightly more, or lots more? I'm thinking lots more. Though the restricted Pawn promotion might keep it down more than the unrestricted Pawn promotion of Embassy Chess.

What's a Chancellor and Archbishop? There's no game on this site with those pieces. Do you mean the Marshall and Cardinal or Janus? They are not new pieces. They're more than 100 years old.

SMIRF Engine: Now an interesting thought,harking back to a previous post, is that many would consider the consultation of these tablebases (for either 8x8 or 10x8) to be acceptable if they were in a book (some book!) but not if they are in a computer ... this is a dilemma (and argument) which I wonder will ever be resolved.

ChessCarpenter: Indeed such table bases are of noticable theoretical interest, and usually a good marketing argument, too. ;-) My opinon on such tables is, that they should stay away from valued games. Moreover, most games, wherein ever table bases could be successfully used, were already decided before that stage has been reached. Nevertheless having such tables could be of remarkable productive usability for answering questions of endgame theory. Thus the place for using them should be in post game analyses only.

This post is just for informational purposes only, and doesn't apply to any one person, program, or game. I think most of us are aware that the 6-piece tablebases for 8x8 chess are completed. This was a massive undertaking, and a DISTRIBUTED project that covered many years, and many computers being used in parallel to complete the task. As for 10x8 chess variants, only the 5-piece tablebases are completed. Just so everyone knows, the branching factor for 10x8 board with the 2 new pieces is just gigantic when compared to 8x8 chess. For example, the 4-piece tablebase set for 10x8 with the Chancellor and Archbishop takes only 26 minutes to compute. The 5-piece set required 34 days! The ratio of time involved was more than a factor of 1800! Also remember the longest 5-piece 10x8 win is 268 moves (not plies) which is longer than the longest 6-piece tablebase win (262 moves) for 8x8 chess.

The 6-piece tablebase set has not even been started, nor does it make sense to begin. The time scaling for its completion will be roughly 75 (number of squares on which to place piece #6) x 2 (each "distance to win" must reserve 2 bytes whereas the 5-piece set only needed 1) x 343 (this times as many more tablebase slices to solve) = over 50,000 times as long as the 5-piece set. These numbers are mind boggling. The 60 gigabyte 10x8 tablebases are all that exist. There is no "1 terbayte" set anywhere. The average tablebase file for the 6-piece set will be 75 x 2 = 150 times the size of the 5-piece files. So, they will be about 300 GB each. This mysterious "1 terabyte" that was mentioned before would only be the size of 3 files, if they were completed (and they are not.) Everyone is probably aware that you have to solve the non-pawn files first, such as King + 2 Queens vs. King + 2 Queens, King + 2 Queens vs. King + 1 Queen + 1 Chancellor, King + 2 Queens vs. King + 1 Queen + 1 Archbishop, etc. Even if these tablebase files were completed, totalling about 1 TB, they would be statistically of no help whatsoever during the coarse of a game between 2 programs.

I think this was enough for an "odd mention" of a 10x8 variant that is not available on BK. I recommend to continue this discussion somewhere else (PMs?).

ChessCarpenter: Hi CC. I am not sure, what this discussion should be good for. My informations have been different to yours, but being the same concerning the multiprocessing version. The 64 Bit version nevertheless seems to be at hands as to be seen in that link to the Vortex order offer. If the speed difference (and its not mentioned big RAM size) would be without influence on the game results, then the question would be, why to use that then. If Vortex really should have gained its last six victories using a 32 Bit engine, that would find my full respect.

All that does not change the fact, that the amateur one man project of a multivariant SMIRF engine actually could not defeat current Vortex playing under those conditions. Nevertheless it is true, that the improved SMIRF has won those mentioned games against available prior versions of Vortex, where there also has been one newly installed only time limited Gold version, which has been the number one last year.

But those wins have been mentioned not to claim SMIRF now to be the number one program, but to underline its made progresses and also to provoke the releasing of a free testing version of the new Gothic Vortex program, which I still have not at hands, whereas SMIRF indeed is available in a free basic donationware version to everybody, which program could be used for testing and comparing purposes simply by giving it a plus of actually about 60% time.

As long as there is nothing comparable from Vortex to be downloaded, nobody but the purchasers of the new Vortex program would be able to test both engines playing Gothic Chess under equal conditions. But a test also should include a competition on 10x8 Capablanca Random Chess, Janus and Embassy. To focus merely on Gothic Chess is not appreciating SMIRF's 8x8 and 10x8 multivariant abilities.

SMIRF Engine: Hi Reinhard,

Just so you know, Gothic Vortex is still 32-bit, not 64-bit. At one time, Ed Trice tried a parallel-processing 64-bit version, but after making too many changes (new piece values, new searching, parallel code, 64-bit code) it was impossible to debug. Ed reverted back to a 32-bit single CPU version and just improved the evaluation function. Ed no longer has a 64-bit compiler, and he will be making future versions of Vortex under Mac OS X.

There is no "professional team" that works on Gothic Vortex. It is just Ed. Several people did contribute PUBLIC DOMAIN code to the project, and they are given credit in the program "about box". But clearly Ed does not employ Eugene Namilov, Marc Bourzachutsky, and Andrew Katach! Gil Dodgen ported the Crafty search engine to the 80-bit world, and Ed threw out the Crafty evaluation function and made a Gothic Chess evaluation function. Sounds simple, but it was a lot of work, 98% of it done by two people, in their spare time.

And, the "size" of Gothic Vortex is mostly due to graphics. All of those pictures in the about box, especially of the 6'5" blonde model with her legs so long, coupled with the marble board pattern at 24-bit color take up a lot of space. The size of the Gothic Vortex search engine is not more than 24K larger than the Crafty DOS search engine, making it under 100K.

You and Ed discussed the speed differences in your hardware when you played on GothicChessLive. He had a 2.4 GHz system, you have a 2.0 GHz system, which is only a 20% difference. Such a difference is insignificant.

Ed rewrote Gothic Vortex to search for attacks, and this is purely a software innovation. Still, this does not mean Vortex is perfect. M_TAL on GothicChessLive.com beat the new Vortex 2 times (after losing a few games). You will remember he was ChessMaster1000 on here, as well as WhiteTower, ChicagoBulls, and maybe 1 or 2 others. While these were game/15 minute controls (rather fast) you have to give George credit for slugging it out and coming on top.

It is my hope that we will not longer see on German discussion boards your posts saying "..and here SMIRF beats that former #1 program, Gothic Vortex..." when you are really running your program against the FREE version of Vortex that only does 7-ply searches and moves in a fraction of a second. I think it's obvious now that the Gothic Vortex program is much stronger than the free version.

swordswisher: "Same program?" Put that question to those, who could answer it, because that seems to be highly relevant for you. I myself do neither own the current Gothic Vortex program offered there nor the one, which has been used at the matching online server. Moreover, even a 60GB table base size could be called huge. Table bases always are growing, so it is recommended to characterize their size rather by their logarithms. Thus from 32GB upwards their log is nearer to 1TB than to 1GB, and thus it makes sense to talk of Terabyte sizes.

Did a search on "Vortex". FOund this link.

http://www.gothicchess.com/order_vortex.html

Same program? Looks like 'tables' are only 60 GB not 1 Terbayte. Where you gettnig the terrabite from?

ChessCarpenter: SMIRF has been improved as shown in its game against the renewed ChessV http://www.gothicchesslive.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=1606 . Despite of playing some interesting games there against the rewritten Gothic Vortex, its actually betas seem to be unable to dominate therein. Vortex currently has been rebuilt as a 64 Bit program and uses a matching high speed hardware. This and the lack of a freely available Gothic Vortex program, which would be reflecting its new abilities, make it difficult to compare those programs under equal conditions.

Despite of that Gothic Vortex relaunch done by a professional team and those used different technology, my first written amateur chess engine SMIRF clearly has shown its underlying intelligence. Be aware, that in those games a 60KB sized SMIRF multivariant engine without any opening library was facing a huge specialized system consisting of a nearly 8MB big program and an almost Terabyte sized set of looking up tables.

Now SMIRF needs to leave its first extemporized structures and to be rewritten in a second rethought amateur approach, which will need a lot of my rare spare time. Actually an X-UCI engine twin of SMIRF is planned to be written for to enhance SMIRF's testability using common 8x8 UCI GUIs.

Remember, there is a free download possibility of SMIRF's basic donationware version at: http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachsmirf_e.html , showing that SMIRF just has won a main prize in the latest C++ programming contest sponsored by Borland.

For those interested in watching computer programs fight it out, here are the last 6 games played between SMIRF and Gothic Vortex (where Vortex won 6-0). I don't think people are aware how strong Vortex really is, it was strong to being with and it has been vastly improved in the last few months. In one of these games Vortex announced mate in 143! Since Reinhard was operating his own SMIRF program, he can tell you all about it.

http://www.gothicchesslive.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=1610
http://www.gothicchesslive.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=1609
http://www.gothicchesslive.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=1607
http://www.gothicchesslive.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=1604
http://www.gothicchesslive.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=1602
http://www.gothicchesslive.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=1600

Beren the 32nd:
a) I did the analysis from an already passed starting position, where the suggested 'best' move moreover has not been selected. Thus I have not seen any problem to post it now.
b) When SMIRF is playing here, the selected time depends on what I intend to test. That also means, that always changing releases and betas are playing. But normally SMIRF is not thinking longer than two minutes for a move. Nevertheless, if opponents take some days a move, SMIRF also will get the chance to think about up to 15 minutes.
c) SMIRF has become a donationware in its basic version according to the rules to a Borland sponsored programming contest, where it just has won one of the prices. It still will be improved, but it needs to be rewritten completely - it is my first playing chessprogram yet. But first I try to finish a UCI engine twin to SMIRF, hoping, there will be a matching UCI GUI supporting 10x8 chess too one day. Download at: http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachsmirf_e.html

Reinhard,
Good to hear from you anyway. I see that SMIRF is still playing some games here. How long do you let SMIRF think about each move? Is it closer to a couple of minutes or a whole day? The choice would surely affect its playing strength.
Also, are you still working on improving its playing ability?

SMIRF Engine: It is interesting that you say there is no advantage in this case. I will not look too closely at your analysis, as only one move of the game has been played so far, and (again!) I don't want to have an unfair advantage, this time by knowing about SMIRF's understanding of the position.
This still leaves the question about the rule. Can Fencer or anybody tell me if it will be implemented?

Beren the 32nd:
In your mentioned case there is no significant advantage (SMIRF's opinion), it seems to be quite regular (at the starting position):

01:51.7 (11.01=) +0.176 1.Nh3 (d3) Nc6 2.Nc3 Nh6 3.d3 d6 4.e4 g6 5.Bxh6 Axh6 6.Bxj7 Rxj7 7.Cb3
00:55.1 (10.07=) +0.281 1.Nh3 (d3) Nc6 2.Nc3 Nh6 3.e4 e5 4.g3 d6 5.d3 g6 6.Be3 Bxh3 7.Axh3 Bxj2 8.Rxj2 Nd4
00:46.5 (10.03=) +0.281 1.Nh3 (Nc3) Nc6 2.Nc3 Nh6 3.e4 e5 4.g3 d6 5.d3 g6 6.Be3 Bxh3 7.Axh3 Bxj2 8.Rxj2 Nd4
00:42.7 (10.03+) +0.178 1.Nh3 (Nc3) Nc6 2.Nc3 Nh6 3.e4 e5 4.g3 d6 5.d3 g6 6.Be3 Bxh3 7.Axh3 Bxj2 8.Rxj2 Nd4
00:29.1 (10.01=) +0.176 1.Nc3 (e4) Nh6 2.Nh3 e5 3.e4 Nc6 4.g3 d6 5.d3 g6 6.Be3 Bxh3 7.Axh3 Bxj2 8.Rxj2 Nd4
00:07.7 (09.01=) +0.281 1.Nc3 (e4) Nh6 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.h3 e5 4.e3 f5 5.d3 Bf6 6.Nxe5 Nxe5 7.Axe5 Rxe5 8.Bxj7
00:02.6 (08.04=) +0.375 1.Nc3 (e4) Nh6 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.h3 e5 4.e3 Bf6 5.Nxe5 Nxe5 6.Axe5 Rxe5 7.Bxj7
00:02.4 (08.03=) +0.375 1.Nc3 (Nh3) Nh6 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.h3 e5 4.e3 Bf6 5.Nxe5 Nxe5 6.Axe5 Rxe5 7.Bxj7
00:00.6 (07.01=) +0.434 1.Nh3 (e3) Nc6 2.Nc3 Nh6 3.e3 e6 4.d4 Cb6 5.Bxj7 Rxj7 6.d5
00:00.2 (06.06=) +0.518 1.Nh3 (e3) Nc6 2.Nc3 Nh6 3.e3 e6 4.Bi6
00:00.1 (06.01=) +0.518 1.Nh3 (Nc3) Nc6 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.d3 e5 4.Bxi7+ Kxi7 5.Ne4
00:00.0 (05.01=) +0.469 1.Nc3 (e4) Nc6 2.Nf3 d6 3.h3 Bg4
00:00.0 (03.03=) +0.377 1.d4 (d3) Nc6 2.e3 Nxd4 3.exd4 Nh6

SMIRF Engine: I have been given a position with neighbouring Bishops as white in this game: http://brainking.com/en/ShowGame?g=1930943
Do we know if Fencer was planning to implement the new rule or not? I don't feel right about playing on with an unfair advantage, unless I'm allowed to count it as a slice of good luck. Other games on this site involve luck don't they? ;-)

iceninejkw: And there's always Dark Chess. Machines aren't playing that game very good and it's hard to get outside help on the internet as the board is kept dark until the game is over.

iceninejkw: I think most people believe all computer programs play at a very high performance level. This is true of the strongest of the strong chess engines, but it is not the case for programs designed by hobbyists. My guess is that SMIRF plays maybe at the "1700 level" if it were to compete with tournament players who are very good at tactics. On GothicChessLive, SMIRF is rated 1697 after 19 games, and it lost most of them.

http://www.gothicchesslive.com/one-players-games.php?id=525

From July 11-September 3 2006, SMIRF had a total of 4 wins and 15 losses. SMIRF had 0 wins and 6 losses against the Gothic Vortex program. SMIRF only beat Twirling_Fern (1425), duethought (1301), and elamin(1342, lost 2 games). The following human players have defeated SMIRF: M_Tal(1937) who is "Chicago Bulls" here on BrainKing, Kerberos (1780), BloodOfBulls(1845) and Cartaphilus(1934). The point is that humans can still beat chess engines that play variants and chess variant programs are not capable of "perfect super computer play" as was mentioned here. Chess variant programs still do not grasp strategy, and humans can "win easily" without having to do much calculation once such errors are played. For example, how many of us smile when we see someone play pawn to a4 then Rook to a3 against us in chess? We pretty much know we will win, but did we calculate everything out to the end of the game? No, there is no need. Similarly, we smile when we watch programs make bad trades, or fail to protect their king, or castle right into our upcoming attack, or open up the game when it should try and keep things bottled up, and so on.

iceninejkw: It is true that there are some players here who use computer programs to make there moves. Some like SMIRF Engine are open about it and use the opponents they find here to fine tune their program, others do it to seek an advantage. This is a point which is often discussed on all chess internet sites at some time or other and there is little that can be done to stop it ... sometimes it is recognisable (by a good discerning player - that is NOT me) and other times it is like you say, someone just "sneeking a peek". I think the majority of the discussion on this site has been on the "Chess" board but it crops up from time to time everywhere.

You will also find that this is not restricted to chess eitehr, apparently there are some pretty good checkers and backgammon ones out ther too but I play neither of those games.

Cheers

WQ :)

great??! Where can humans go now? I get suspicious when I see a patzer move or two and then perfect super computer play thereafter in its characteristic mysterious, clueless (to a human) strategy. Then I check the players stats and see something like 19-0-1. I've been accused myself and then put on someone's no play list. Well I do have a 2200 plus uscf over the board rating I tell him and occationally put together good games by random. But to no avail. The suspicion is always there as we nuke suspected centaurs and computers. Are the upper ranks filled with those who sneak a peak ("just a little is okay, my ego is so fragile") at their computer when the going gets tough? Oh well, its the bane of postal\internet chess.

I have a few in the waiting room if anyone would a game or two. I will be gone this weekend but will move when able.

SMIRF Engine:
lets play

Bwild: If you really would like to play a game against my beta engine SMIRF, do it. I myself do not challenge anybody, to avoid discussions.

Chicago Bulls: Did you have time to do this yet? I guess not.

Marfitalu: I will do a calculation at night of "safe-Check" pieces values and also for Reinhard's approach pieces values for Grand Chess.....
Later....