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)
Véčet klobu na mloveni
Néni tě dovoleny datlovat do toďteho klobo. Abes mohl datlovat do toďteho klobo, mosiš mit némiň členstvi Brain pinčl.
O čem je toďten plk: Re: SMIRF left the GC championship
SMIRF Engine: Reinhard, you were just asked to replay the game. Ed was more than fair. You left a game when you were far behind in time, and you did not come back. Ed did not forfeit your game, which he should have. He GAVE you a draw, which upset his opponent. If anything, Ed took the pressure for this decision so SMIRF could stay in the running.
I don't see how you can claim Ed pressured you. You also resigned a game against Zillions that was a disconnect, and the operator was BrainKing's Chessmaster1000 who I think is also Pythagoras (I hope I am right on this.) He did not pressure you and he wanted to replay the game, instead, you quit. In another game, again you resigned. After this third time, no matter what the reasons were, you were asked to apologize for your behavior, and that was all. In baseball, you get 3 strikes, then you are out. Here all you had to do was say you were sorry (for ruining the whole tournament) and then replay the games, and all would have been forgiven.
Was this too much to ask? You quit 3 times, after all, and the International Computer Games Association Journal was asking Ed for daily updates. They, and also Chessville.com, are now unable to do a report on the 2005 Gothic Chess Computer World Championship, and they have waited for this for months!
Look at the great article that was done last year:
And you talk about "pressure?" It does not make sense.
You quit. You quit again. You quit a third time. Ed asked you to say you are sorry.
You didn't, you blamed everyone else for your problems.
I see nothing resembling pressure, unless you are talking about how you put in on yourself.
O čem je toďten plk: Re: SMIRF left the GC championship
Fencer: Filip,
Reinahrd left because of another person and it had nothing to do with Ed. My point is he LEFT rather than try and resolve the issues. And this has been my past experience (and not only mine.)
O čem je toďten plk: Re: SMIRF left the GC championship
Fencer: Thank you for your words, but to avoid misunderstandings: Ed for sure had to be interested to have his event completed, but finally put too much pressure on me. The main problem had been, that it was completely left to the participants, how to reconstruct a broken game, having no assistance by the system for that, which moreover was crashing at e.p. captures. Nevertheless the participants knew about that and thus should cooperate appropriately during such reenterings. Thus the reason for my resigns mainly had been the behaviour of a special participant during such repair situations.
Here is something I think everyone will like. Remember all of the talk about the rating system on here? Well, Ed Trice captured all of the games and re-rated them all in the same date order that they were played. He used the Glicko system which is even more accurate than the Elo rating system most people know about. Glicko uses 2 numbers per player, one for your rating, and another that measures the rating accuracy, which is also known as Rating Deviation. The more you play, the more accurate your rating becomes. So if you beat an 1800 player with a more accurate rating, you get more points that if you beat a player with the same rating that is not as accurate.
The re-rating took place in November 2005 and here are the results if you want to see what your "real" rating would be:
O čem je toďten plk: Re: SMIRF left the GC championship
ChessCarpenter and SMIRF Engine: As suggested, this discussion should not continue here. I will allow, however, SMIRF a brief explanation if he so desires and then that will be the end of it. After the reply, if one comes, I will review what has been said and ensure that it does not include personal attacks. I would ask you both to review what you have written (or will write) in this light.
O čem je toďten plk: Re: SMIRF left the GC championship
Přetvořeny oževatelem SMIRF Engine (9. ledna 2006, 01:59:49)
ChessCarpenter: I have commented all this where it belongs to: in Ed Trice's GC forum. There is no need to repeat the discussion here. If others may think to have the right to retard games, I am convinced to have the right to resign. I have no motivation to play kindergarden games, mainly caused by a system, which does not allow to simply reenter a broken game and by players, when endlessly worrying about seconds, where time frames cannot be rebuilt exactly at all.
P.S.: Who is interested in details should inspect http://s13.invisionfree.com/Gothic_Chess_Forum/index.php (GC forum), or otherwise write to me directly. You will find there, that I have tried to suggest a hopefully fair modus operandi for such situations, which ignoringly has been answered by even more pressure on me, what lead me to disengage at GothicChess.
O čem je toďten plk: Re: SMIRF left the GC championship
Fencer: Filip,
As you know when you started your own site, at one point there were some problems with BrainKing being up all of the time. On GothicChessLive.com there are similar "growing pains." In the case of the SMIRF operator, I believe he is the one who was experiencing problems disconnecting. The site does not have a feature to automatically restore games so it is up to the players to do so.
Reinhard was asking his opponent so start the clocks with less time than he had when they left, because a Fischer "+25 seconds" was added with each move. His opponent did not have a move list displayed, so he needed Reinhard to relay the moves. His opponent wanted to start the clocks where they were, and just let any added time to run down before the next move was made. Reinahrd did not want to do this. His opponent finally gave in to his requests and they replayed the game. Reinhard typed a wrong move once, so they had to start over. Reinahrd made a wrong move when he was entering his own move, so there was a need to start over again. All during this, it was Reinahrd's turn to move in a difficult position, so SMIRF could have been searching. So, his opponent said "since so much time elapsed since my move, what is the SMIRF move?" At this point it was 7 minutes since his opponent had moved. It should be noted this opponent also had a 12 minute time advantage with less than half an hour left in the game. SMIRF refused to say what move he had made. Finally, the game was restored, and because of the relaying of moves by typing and the request to start with less time, SMIRF had 11 minutes more on his clock that at the time of the disconnect, and his opponent has 4 minutes less than was on his clock. His opponent was typing up a suggestion when SMIRF offered a draw. Since the position was finally restored correctly, his opponent did not accept the draw. Again, I remind all that SMIRF has more time on his clock, the opponent less, and it was still SMIRF's turn to move. And what did SMIRF do? He resigned.
SMIRF also resigned a game in a tough position against Zillions when a disconnect occurred, but this disconnect was the server losing its connection so it was not his fault. It is strange that all of these resignations occurred after SMIRF lost a 109 move game to the ChessV program which you can see here: http://www.gothicchesslive.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=444
This basically eliminated SMIRF's chances of winning the event, despite scoring 1-1 against last year's winner, Gothic Vortex. SMIRF also left a previous game in progress against ChessV, which Ed Trice declared a draw though it is clear SMIRF had a real chance to lose this game too as it was behind in time and its evaluation was overly optimistic. This same over-optimism cost SMIRF an easy draw in that 109 move game, ChessV mentioned several times that the game was a draw, and all such implicit offers were refused by Reinhard. He played on, then lost, then this behavior of "quitting to save face" emerged.
SMIRF has also done the same thing to me here on BrainKing. When I was playing in the World Open last year, I took some vacation days. I made a few moves against other opponents, but did not make move #1 against him at the start of a finals section, and he resigned his game against me and the other player in the finals section who WAS NOT even on vacation!
I mention this so you have a fuller version of the story and know more about Reinhard. When he does not get his way, he quits.
Unfortunately there is again a problem with this beta version as it plays instantly every move....
What should we put for license keys to work properly until February....?
O čem je toďten plk: Embassy Chess (MBC) and SMIRF
At http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachsmirf_e.html there a new beta version of SMIRF (free usable in January) could be downloaded. It should be able to also play MBC now, but it of course needs test reports. The necessary new PGN still is different from Brainking's for MBC, where some matching changes might be helpful and warmly wellcomed.
O čem je toďten plk: Re: Taboo Chess needs time ...
Pythagoras: There still is some time needed. After a lot of unproductive quarrels end of last year I had serious trouble with my PC. Now I am nearly finished with reinstalling systems, development tools and backups on a very changed hardware, which is not at all faster than before for current SMIRF, but prepared for multiprocessing (2 core).
I have sad news to report : David Pritchard, for whose second edition of the Encyclopedia of Chess Variants I collected games here, has died accidentally on December 11. A big part of the book was already written, but I have of course no idea whether someone will finish the huge work that he was doing. I will forward here the information I might get about that.
Among the great games collected here, a few of them may still be published in another way, either in the magazine "Variant Chess", either on my website. Again, if it happens I will inform the players who provided me with the games.
naughtypawn: No, I don't know any European sources for that, but that does not mean that they would not exist. But maybe following Caissa page could give you some additional ideas: http://www.spezialschach.de/ or also Dr. Henk van Haeringen's Superchess page http://www.superchess.nl/
I am interested in buying a Capablanca Random Chess (or a Gothic Chess). Do you know where can I buy one? I know that the author of Gothic Chess sells them, but I live in Spain and the delivery is too expensive. Do you know a web, place, etc., closer? Thanks and Happy New Year!
O čem je toďten plk: SMIRF left the GC championship
There have been some questions on that, so I will repeat here, what I have written in Ed Trice's GothicChess forum:
Nobody has expected, that GothicChess Online would provide a perfect system environment. Well, there already have been some experiences with interrupts. And even when now the extrem bug related to e.p.-captures was new in its extension, so all have been aware of the necessity, to occasionally reconstruct chess games from their beginning. Insofar Ed Trice as organizer is not to be burden with that.
But it could not be, that attempts to reconstruct broken chess games (as far as possible) will end in personal attacks. I am neither able to guarantee an exact reestablishment of the timings, nor to exclude mistakes during the reentering of a chess game, especially if the other side is not disposing on own game notations. Such mistakes could be quickly corrected by starting another attempt to reconstruct the chess game. But it will make no sense to decline a new effort of reconstruction but instead to vituperate ones opponent or to pressurize him by any other mean.
Now there different allegations are to be read. Things I imagined to be cleared for long actually are excavated again. Too bad. Also one is trying to constrain me by a threatening banishment to tolerate such effrontery. One time I bite the bullet, however a second time is really too much in this event. SMIRF has been prepared for long for this tournament, today this program is stable and effective. Thus a surrender of any further partcipation is bitter. But regrettably I cannot dwell on such an attempted extortion. I rather terminate my engagement for GothicChess.
In the case that I really am the bad boy, as which I have been pictured in different postings, all should be sincerely happy on my retirement from this tournament. Whether now all SMIRF results would be canceled or the outstanding chess games would be judged as been lost is left to the organizer Ed Trice. If you favor the opinions of given teammates SMIRF anyway would not have had any chance for any more scored point. It does also not matter here, how I would valuate this.
I had considered to propose the suggestion to have another person continue playing SMIRF instead of me. But after the last e-mails I received I do not see any tangible sense even in that variant.
O čem je toďten plk: Re: The 2005 Gothic Chess Computer World Championship
ChessCarpenter: I predict a win for white in the next Vortex - Smirf game. It appears that Reinhardt has been hard at work making Smirf play better, they're all looking pretty good (except for poor Zillions) but ChessV is nice.
O čem je toďten plk: The 2005 Gothic Chess Computer World Championship
Here are some of the games from the first 6 rounds of the Gothic Chess Computer World Championship. New versions of Vortex and SMIRF are dominating, and they are 1-1 against each other so far!
1-Decima = Based on a really interesting concept! The bad thing is that it has a rather slow gameplay. I assume that games would be long until the interesting indeed target is accomplished.....
2-CRC = Based on the innovative idea of Ficsher, now for 10x8 boards including the Bishop+Knight and Rook+Knight pieces. JACV** but this time this is interesting really, as the gameplay is very good.....
3-Odins Rune Chess = Not very easy rules to follow. Yet when they are completely understood the game is very good......
4-Opulent Chess = Man, too tactical and complicated in its gameplay(blame the 10x10 board), to be something to worth mention. JACV!
5-Chess with Batteries = It has the interesting idea of the batterie and it's quite interesting, but i think it's just another regular Chess variant(JACV).
6-Eurasian Chess = A very difficult game to play properly due to the big branching factor and many kind of moves possible. Since there are many Pawns the quick and interesting play of Chinese Chess is not possible.....
7-TenCubed Chess = Not any innovative idea and way too complicated to play! I'm not speaking for the rules but about the gameplay......
8-Countdown = A game with too many rules to remember and it needs 10 players to be played, although this is not mandatory and fewer are possible, yet i don't know if 2 players game would be interesting. It is based on luck and although it is based on an interesting idea is not something intriguing in my opinion.......
O čem je toďten plk: Re: Games for the Encyclopedia of Chess Variants
Přetvořeny oževatelem andreas (25. lestopado 2005, 20:55:14)
nabla: Hopefully Pritchard will not miss Capablanca Random Chess. As an example game I can suggest the following interesting miniature:
Caissus - andreas
O čem je toďten plk: Re: Games for the Encyclopedia of Chess Variants
Thank you all for those games. For the moment I had time to look to Walter's and ChessCarpenter's games only, and they certainly are entertaining (but I must confess that in Walter's game I have been a bit puzzled by redsales' declined bishop sacrifice :-) )
I am including 3 Janus chess games here for your review.
Two are against a very strong FIDE Master from Germany,
a hard fought win, and a draw when down by about 4-5 pawns!
The other game is one where I announced a mate in 27 after
having sacrificed an Archbishop (Janus) + pawn for only a knight.
The resulting ending is 2 Rooks + 3 unconnected pawns vs.
Janus + 6 pawns, two pairs of which are connected on the extreme flanks.
The 2 Rooks win this technical ending, very worthy of print.
"Mely" is a German Fide Master, also a very strong
Janus Chess player. Here is a win against him. If you are
interested, I can annotate portions of this game.
Gothic Chess is the game I invented, and I pour a great deal of energy
into each and every game. I play out almost every move to the ending
before making any single move on BrainKing.
I do this many times over, so I get an excellent insight into that which will come.
Here are some amazing games:
Black spends 3 days thinking about taking my queen, then declines with 16...h6
to reinforce his king. I continue to let the queen hang, then place a knight in front of
a pawn with 17. Nj5!! after which he takes the queen. After 17...Nxd1 18. Nxg6,
I have only a pawn for the queen, against a player rated 2065.
The subsequent win is so complex, it would take a few pages to annotate properly,
but if there was ever a single Gothic Chess game that should be published, it
should be this one.
This opening is known as "Trice's Gambit" (1. c4 f5 2. Nc3 Axc4) and always
produces exciting games. In fact, there has been more than one thematic tournament
on BrainKing using this opening.
The Knights were jumping around for awhile. Then he offered a Bishop on move 21. I didn't take the Bishop on move 21 and opted for the troublesome Pawn. Then the pins started happening, along with threats real or imagined. I never did move the one Bishop and when he took it later in the game I didn't do much about it as the Bishop wasn't needed after that. It had guarded a lot of threats most of the game without ever having been moved. Towards the end he gave up his Janus to stay in the game. I did the same some moves later as he had one last checkmate to get me with if I didn't.
Looking back through the moves and trying to remember why I moved as I did, doesn't seem the same as when I was actually playing the game. If the game is of interest to you or your freind, I can go back through it with more time and perhaps see or remember what was going on.
I know there were threats in that game that made some of the moves look strange at the time they were played. Also, we aren't the strongest Janus Chess players, so it's pretty easy to miss an apparent good move when something complicated and speculative might work. :)
O čem je toďten plk: Re: Games for the Encyclopedia of Chess Variants
ChessCarpenter: Thank you for the links, I will give them to David, and you are right that Ed Trice is a very good candidate to show nice games of his, I should PM him.
BTW, in case anybody was unsure about it, Gothic Chess is eligible for appearance in the ECV although it is patented.
You can see he has 325 wins, 25 draws, 1 loss (in 8x8 chess) never lost in a chess variant game. He has beaten all of the top players, repeatedly, and often with spectacular sacrifices.
Some of his stuff is published on Chessville.com, like:
He is a superb annotator with good writing skills, as you can see.
I am also a National Tournament Director for the Gothic Chess Federation, and
have access to about 5000 games or more. Just let me know how I can help.
O čem je toďten plk: Games for the Encyclopedia of Chess Variants
Hi variants players,
I am writing this for David Pritchard, who is close to finishing the second edition of his famous book "The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants". He is always looking for good sample games, and when I offered him to make this call on Brainking, he found it was an excellent idea. There are many variants played here and the turn-based type of play makes for better games than blitz.
The present message is a call for "best games" by the top BK players - I have no precise idea about what "top" means, but probably it should be thought as something like having been in the top 5 BKR in the variant played. Best games can be won, but also drawn or lost games. If you are interested that one of your games shows in the Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, just submit to me your one or two best games in each variant. All I need is the game id (or the link to the game, which looks like http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=123456), given either in a PM to me or on that board.
The time delay for this is about one month. After that, David (and me!) will still be interested in seeing your best games, but he will not be able to include them in the book any more.
SMIRF Engine: Won't it be eventually implemented, after a few thousand games, and only for reasons of avoiding clearly "losing" opening moves? Unless ALL opening moves have no clear losing potential whatsoever :)
Walter Montego: The current published version of SMIRF is beta 1.33. Actually a new version is about to be completed supporting then 4 languages Eng/Ger/Fra/Swe. You are right, actually at games with fixed starting arrays like traditional chess, you could vary played openings by stopping the engine's thinking suddenly by hand. I myself use to test the engine by playing CRC, there will be always new situations. Of course the opening behaviour is seriously influenced by the playing version, because mostly the evaluation function or something else will have been slightly changed (and improved as I hope).
SMIRF Engine: I don't know about the current version of SMIRF, but I remember it starting the games differently when playing it in Janus Chess. And defending differently too. That doesn't prove anything though. What move it selects could be very dependent on how long it searches to make the move, even the very first move of the game. This being so, it could make a different move if he sets it to think 1 hour before moving as compared to one minute or one day. And then there's upgrades. And what happens when the machine view two or more moves as equally best moves for it. It has to pick one of them. Perhaps it has a random factor if its not memorizing its played games. Remember that to his program the start of the game is the same as 20 moves later, it just wings every move.
Walter Montego: if the machine made the same opening move every game without an opening library to draw from then the problem is with the game . . . not the program. I was simply asking to satiate my curiosity.
ColonelCrockett: Why would it make a difference if it made a different move or not? If it always made the same opening move as White it could be that it thinks that is the best move. If it makes different moves on occasion, then I would like to know why it would.
(do skréše) Jak chceš stáhnót léstke rechléc, možeš omezet kopo okazovanéch věci za pomoce léstko Héblátka. Take možeš zkoset pospřehébat počte okazovanéch špilu na dóležitym léstko a počte plku na léstko klobo na mloveni. (pauloaguia) (okázat šecke vechetávke)