Janus is a Roman god with two faces.This symbol looks like a dog. It would be better to use the regular Janussymbol (www.janusschach.de)what I have proposed to fencer.

I've started to play Janus Chess. Just wondering what kind of creature/symbol is the Janus?

The World Rankings are what I assumed you called the ranking points that you calculated manually, when we first played back in the Yahoo Club, while I was sketching the board diagrams on pieces of paper and naviguessing my way around the board. Oh BTW, where ever has Streetman gone?

Are you saying that all previous rankings are now null and void, and the BK ratings is the only official one now? Hhmmphh... you might have said that earlier, before I threw a few games to the wind...
[Just kidding!]

I am not sure what you mean. The BrainKing ratings are always in effect, and I think they are more than adequate.

Can you please explain what the world ratings are, and why you believe a substitution is necessary?

Are the world ratings still in effect? I would like to suggest using the world rating for certain games, especially the tournament ones.

It is my hope that this board is used to publish interesting information about the game of Gothic Chess. On more than one occasion, I have removed derrogatory remarks and posts that are obviously inflamatory in nature.

Here is the editing policy I employ.

1. If you post something that is blatantly antagonistic, that post will be removed.

2. If you continue to use this forum to carry out personal disputes, you will have your posting priviledges revoked.

That being said, try to resolve matters of dispute with the person you are having the dispute with, and do not make it everyone else's business.

matthewhall: Your in luck - the tournament you were in, the other people in the section finished their games today, so you are allowed to enter another tournament.

sure
upgrade to rook. it's currently only 28$, slightly more than half the price this tournament originally asked for as entrance fee

I'd love to enter, but I'm a lowly Brain Pawn, and stuck in the interminable BigBadWolf #3 tourney...any way to bail out of an existing tourney I've already finished my games in and have no chance of advancing through?

To celebrate the fact that we recently received additional funding for the Gothic Chess Federation, we will have a $3000 first prize tournament for the title of World Champion. There is no entrance fee!! First round winners from each section of 8 players will also receive $250 as soon as the play completes. If more than one winner, this $250 will be split equally. Winners of the second round (if there is one) will receive $500 each. This money will be split in the event of multiple winners in each section. The winner of the tournament will receive an additional $3000. The second place finisher will receive $1000.

Omega Chess
I've never tried them. And the board looks strange.

omega chess ???? never heard of the one ... and there is a crazy screen variant !!!! WOW (LOL)

Right.
I am afraid that it would lead to a heap of variant combinations [gothic loop chess, atomic janus chess, omega crazy screen chess, ...] which is exactly what I don't want to do here.

No unauthorized explosives without expressed written permission of Fencer! We already had one server blow up this week!

Hum...... maybe with different "atomic" rules - maybe like no pawn that is in the 2nd row (that was not been moved) can be taken by the other player, but will not "blow up" the other pieces next to it. Once pawn is moved, it will blow up the other pieces.

BBW - i think you are right but being on the offensive first up means that you must continually put on pressure which can cost pieces. Would like to try it out though.

I really like atomic chess also (even though I'm not good at that either) - and I thought about an "atomic Gothic Chess", but with the extra 2 "power" chess pieces, I think the white player can start an attack really quick and win the game without black having much of a chance.

(but I did not do a lot of research of atomic gothic chess, so I might be wrong) :-)

My favourite variant is atomic (check my ratings and you will see why LOL) so you can guess which one I would vote for :)

(I posted this a couple of days ago, but it was lost with the "down server" - so I'm posting it again to see if I can get any additional comments)

Suggestion: Dark Gothic Chess - Basicly just like regular Dark chess where each player can not see each other board - but use the newer "Gothic Chess board"

Why a new version: Gothic Chess is the second most popular chess game here on BrainKing (Just behind regular Chess) - with a new game being so popular - I believe a "dark" version of Gothic Chess would do pretty good here.

Thanks!

GothicChess.org is temporarily running on http://GothicChess.BrainKing.com.

I apologize for a temporary inactivity of GothicChess.org site. It is located on our web/database server which is currently down [see Server News for more information].<br>
All files have been sucessfully transfered to our second server but the domain itself needs to be redirected to another IP address. It can take several days until the change is reflected on all DNS servers.

Click here for Gothic Openings

It is not much, but all I have so far.

Hey, I'm just getting into this game, making the transition over from normal chess. I've already asked Fencer this in the middle of the game, but I thought it'd make sense to ask here too... are there any websites on "opening theory" for Gothic Chess as such? Or is "theory" not developed enough yet, meaning we're in the equivalent of about the 16th century of real chess, where other than a handful of strong players (e.g. Ruy Lopez) knew anyhing much about how to open a game and so on?

I guess that would make the game even more "gothic"... heh

I'm probably thinking along the wrong lines here, but a lot of my strength in normal chess comes from my knowledge of opening theory... I'm kinda lost at the moment here :-)

Anyway, thanks in advance,
Craig

Some people were asking me about the World Championship tournament, where the winner receives $2000 and then would play me for the title.

Since only 3 people have signed up, will the winner still receive $2000?

The answer is "yes". The prize fund comes from the coffers of our sales, such as Gothic Chess boards and things like that. We have more than enough money to cover the prize fund.

So, for $50, you have a chance to win $2000.

The tournament starts on September 1, and I think the average rating of the players is below 1500!

Take a chance! Somebody will win the $2000, and it will not be me!

I thought the Chancellor ending was important since it is the first real life example of such an ending. Even the famous Rook and Pawn Lucena Position had a predecessor referenced in that book from over 500 years ago!

The Chancellor and Pawn ending we were in has no such predecessor -- it is the first such ending, ever.

You are correct in that 38...d5 was a transition of sorts in the game. In fact, you could argue black was losing the whole game by making non-developing opening moves, at one point in time with only two minors developed while all of white's forces were in play with the option to castle to either side.

After 38...d5 white did have the opportunity to equalize, but the pawn push b3 on move 44 is where I consider the position definitively lost.

black to move and win

I think Black was forced to take the bishop, allowing the chancellor check and then the recovery of it, leading to an equal position with white to move and deliver check.

I think the analysis of the chancellor endgame is not very important. You can see light that White`s positions becomes bader after Black`s rook invades in the white position with 40..Re2!and after 49.Cxg2 the position is probably
lost for White because he loses now many of his pawns and now with enough time of consideration it is only a question of Black`s technique until he can realize his win.
More interested is the question why the better position of White until the 38.Move now was lost!
Ed found a very good move with 38...d6-d5!!, so my move 38.Bh3-g2?? was a mistake and loses the advantage.
I have to prove a better move, which doesn`t White allow to play 38..d6-d5.
Better seems to be at first sight 38.Cf4!? or 38.Ce5!? Comments?

I see another position which might seem a little confusing.

white to move

From the prior sequence black allowed the a-pawn to fall. Why?

I had already worked out a way to exchange chancellors if Cxa7 was played. It is odd to say this, buy Cxa7 was actually a bad move in that position!

The game could drag on with Chancellors checking each other ad infinitum, so the only way to end the game was to aggressively seek a Chancellor trade. The only way to do this was to set up a check that also is in the same rank or file as the white chancellor.

Independent of white's choices, after Cxa7 I could set up such an exchange, and this is exactly how the game was concluded.

I will have to annotate the ending of that game (I do not think it would be possible to annotate the whole thing.) I learned a lot about Chancellor and Pawn endings from it, and there are some new strategies for when to give up your checking sequence and allow yourself to be checked.

I am assuming my move 54...i6 is the source of some confusion. I thought about this move for a long time before making it. The rest of the game we pretty much played at a rate of about 2 minutes per move. We were both online and I guess we were both anxious of the outcome before CaissasDream went on vacation.

Here is the start of the difficult portion of the ending

white to move

This is where I stopped checking as black and allowed white to give check, only for his checks to expire at the moment when I could play ...Cd2+ which wins the b3 pawn and established 3 connected passed pawns on the queenside.

There is too much to write about here, but that is a good start.

Well, I see from http://www.gothicchess.org/brain_king.html
that CaissasDream is now 16-1-1 and GothicChessPro is 48-0! I looked at their game today and it was incredible!! CaissasDream was 16-0 with 1 draw before Ed beat him in an incredible Chancellor and pawn ending. You guys should look at the game! The moves that were made in the ending are too complex to believe. I wish someone would explain it to me!

And Fencer, why is Ed's rating only 2134 with a 48-0 performance that includes beating almost all of the top players...Danoschek(1994)twice and CaissasDream(2094) and it looks like he has a strong or even winning position against DescenterKM(2191), as well as, doing a pretty good job on me too! Are the ratings being adjusted properly?

I think it is some exciting stuff. Check it out by clicking here and feel free to post your comments.

Click on Order your set if you want one. To see what one looks like up close, click on this link

And you can order 2 sets for twice as much money, a real bargain :)

Well, the good news is, Zillions is weak at Gothic Chess. The branching factor is still too high. It plays maybe at the 1600 or 1700 level overall, but I have yet to see it play an endgame over the 1500 level.

The best way to defeat these programs is with your mind. When I play games on here, I set up two Gothic Chess boards. One with the parent position, and another as an analysis board. For every move for every game I take it down as far as I can, usually 20 or 30 moves ahead. Then I look at the other board, set the position up again, then play down the line in the same fashion. Eventually you get the sense for the type of ending you can force, and the kind your opponent may be able to steer clear of. Knowing this, you can make strategic moves to get even masters in trouble.

That way I can play well beyond the scope of any program, and I have yet to have any problems.

Of course, the hypothetical engine we were talking about is just that -- hypothetical. It may be here one day though.

Maybe we will look for some beta testers in the near future. I am not sure if anyone would be interested in doing this.

I came to BrainKing to play variations of the usual board games such as checkers, and chess because of the rampant use of programs. After learning about zillions from this DB I saw at the said site that there are programs for nearly all of the games that are played here. "BUMMER" I saw a plug-in for gothic evolution chess but not the version here. I personally think that having a Gothic Chess program available would only mean that from now on we would be playing against it and not against each other. I have been playing games on the internet for over 6 years and have seen the resulting program wars escalate almost exponentially. I was thinking of upgrading and getting in the GC tournament but with the advent of a program entering into the equation it would only end up being a battle of cpu power and not brain power. If you are tallying votes count me as a nay at least until the end of the championship. There's my $0.02.

Just a couple of notes:
1) "Fencer Time" is GMT+01:00 :-)
2) When we upgrade our hardware to more powerful machines, I will be able to generate this page each time a game of gothic chess is finished, so it will always reflect the real status.

Responding to Chesscarpenter on July 22: the reason I took so long signing up was the 4-day time limit. I have had to convince myself that I will check the games at least every other day. Many times when I am able to get to the computer, I call up BrainKing to find the site is "down." So I go off and read other sites, hit the e-mail, losing interest in checking BrianKing for an hour or two. Then my time is all gone, and so much for chess! If the reliability of BrainKing could be advanced a bit more, it would be more attractive. As it is, I don't know what causes the down time, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has to do with all the non-chess and non-GothicChess games being handled concurrently with the chess and Gothic games. If that is the case, then it might help out to separate the two: have one branch of the site for chess and Gothic games, which can remain active while the other branch of non-chess and non-Gothic games goes down for its frequently-needed maintenance. Is that a possibility, or am I just barking up the wrong tree?

If anyone is interested, we have just successfully integrated the BrainKing ratings on the GothicChess.org website. Now, every night at Midnight "Fencer Time", all of the win-loss-draw stats will be pushed to the GothicChess.org server.

You can click here to see the ratings format or just go to http://www.GothicChess.org/brain_king.html yourself. You might want to bookmark that page.

I created an 1800+ tournament for Gothic. Winner to receive a free Gothic Chess set. Too few of the top players have been duking it out, let's mix it up a little :)

I think the price should be such that it makes the effort worthwhile, but doesn't put people in the poorhouse.

I am not sure what the market will bear, but I think $50 for about a combined 500 hours of effort to produce and test the program should be about right.

I have given some thought to making different flavors available. For example, a free version would still give most people a battle, but if we limit it to 9 plies of search, we can be assured that it will not destroy the game playing population on here if some evil people were turning it loose on others.

Maybe the $50 version would have some additional features, like maybe 11 plies of search (maximum) and a larger opening book.

A higher end version might also have endgame databases, like those dreadful Rook and Pawn endings or Queen vs. Archbishop (now that would be cool.)

The problem is, how can we be sure that releasing a program will not kill the fun of playing online, yet at the same time give people some cool features (a strong playing partner and a worthy opponent) ?

This is the debate.

I`d probably buy it if the price is reasonable.
To be able to use it as a virtual Gothic Chess board would be the most important feature to me.

I'm all for it...I think being able to train either against a machine or with machine would quickly raise the level of play here. What's the cost? (sorry, I'm on a perpetually tight budget...)

Zillions is so weak it is not funny. I have found it makes losing moves as early as move 3 or 4 of its games. It often would push the same pawn twice in the opening, like d2-d4 then d4-d5, which is an immediate loss in about 99% of the cases! So, I have been structuring my entire opening repetoire to be "anti-Zillions", and I have yet to lose a game on here.

The reason I posed the question is because I am interested in the demand for such an engine.

For example, let's just say I were to put together a team of programmers to tackle the job of creating a program that can analyze over 250,000 positions per second (compare this to zillions at about 30,000 per second) that would have a great graphical user interface, an anti-Zillions opening book, some of my own opening cooks and improvements to games I have seen played by the "top 10" on here, do you think anyone would want to buy it?

What features would you want to see in it?

The reason I ask is because some discussion is currently going on. If the playing population on here could convince me it would be worth it, such a thing could be done, rather quickly too I might add.

And, for Janus chess fans, one small change to the starting position, and you have a Janus chess engine (although no opening book of course.)

Comments?

I agree with Juangrande it would be more interested to have a good interface like winboard in standard chess than a strong engine.But there is no chance to get both, I asked the arena-programmer,arena is similar like winboard (http://www.playwitharena.com/),
and he answered that the expense is to big for only a few people who are playing these games.He refered to the weaker "Zillions".
But it is better too because I have no fun if my opponent (and I) have strong engines with 2500 Elo like Fritz or Chessmaster on both sides
That`s the reason why I am playing chessvariants and not standard chess!

A Gothic Chess program can help out in the sense that it will mature the game for all of us in all aspects of the game, not to mention being able to play a game at your own leisure against the program which is a huge plus! As far as cheating goes...the only answer will be to play "Over the Board" tournaments to see how strong players really are! Hopefully, one day this will come to pass as I for one would love to see people playing Gothic Chess as much as Chess.

On a different note I was just wondering why only myself and one other person have signed up for the 2003 Gothic World Championship...everyone seems to be interested in a $250 tournament, so what is $50 to at least win $2000 and at least a shot at winning $150 for your section...when I read about playing in this tournament I thought it was the best idea Ed could have. Is $50 that steep that no one wants to enter or are there other reasons?

Of more immediate interest to me would be an interface (like WinBoard, for example) that could seve as a digital Gothic chessboard and that could read and save moves in PGN format. However, I do think a strong chess engine would also be nice (to play against, practice with, and analyze with). I would be more interested in an extensive endgame tablebase than an extensive opening book, but I may be in the minority. A downside to having a strong Gothic Chess engine is that some would use it to play for them in online games (as happens with chess now).

Does anybody think a program to play the game of Gothic Chess would be cool? One with an opening book, the ability to search ahead (fast, not like Zillions) and analyze positions? Or do you think that such a program might spoil the game?

Put your opinion in here, feel free to elaborate.

Ed, requested website change is done, but only for next Monday's update. Apologise for this, but really didn't have time this week to chase up on the earlier file.

PS: Know how to auto-point the bow/odyseuss account to the new account?

More-n-more 65 people showing up here without notice! :)

You might want to go to http://www.GothicChess.org/how_to_play_games.html (or just click here ) and review some of the games there. They are animated files, so you just sit back and watch a little movie.