I'm sorry to say I'm removing this discussion board from my "Favourite boards". I joined it to explore a fascinating game but the signal-to-noise ratio is too high. I'm not interested in ad hominem attacks, whether or not they're justified. It's sad that five star talent seems to be being wasted on all sides.

That's the problem with humour: not all of it is universal. I was highly amused by ughaibu's posting. I thought it both creative and funny, and I couldn't believe that anyone would take offence. But as a fellow Brit of mature years it's likely that ughaibu and I have senses of humour that overlap to some extent.

Humour is sometimes a risk, especially when it's cross-culture. But today is April Fool's Day, and it's just possible that Andromedical is playing a joke on us by pretending to take things so seriously!

First all let me say I have no axe to grind either way with regard to Gothic Chess or its inventor. However, I see a whole load of people who like to play the game here and I see the possibility of that being in jeopardy. So here's a suggestion. I hope it's seen as a constructive one by all concerned. It's certainly meant that way...

I've looked through Ed's patent and it's very specific about the way the pieces are arranged and which files they're on. Obviously this is very important to the dynamics of the game vis-a-vis Capablanca Chess. However, because the piece placement is stated so specifically (e.g. "the chancellors are located at e1, e8 respectively"), other arrangements of the pieces would seem to me not to infringe the patent.

However, what piece placement could be different enough to steer clear of the patent but still retain the desired characteristics of Gothic Chess? Simple. All we need to do is use a mirror image piece placement! The board is numbered and lettered in the normal way with a1 in white's left hand corner but now his king is at e1 not f1, his queen is at g1 not d1, his chancellor is at f1 not e1 and his archbishop is at d1 not g1.

Now this is not Gothic Chess as defined in the patent. And players would have to get used to playing with the king and queen sides swapped over, but people do seem very versatile here! And it'll need a new name (like Storm Chess of course! ) and a small amount of reprogramming from the Fencer and co. But surely everyone would then be happy?

Walter Montego: Whoops, sorry Walter. I didn't mean to misquote you.

Yes, easy to learn and easy to do are indeed different things - I know since that's been part of my job for years!

Is Gothic Chess harder to learn to play well than regular chess? Probably yes. But, IMHO, only at the moment. But I don't think that's anything inherent in the game itself. The reason regular chess is so easy to learn to play well is that we're standing on the shoulders of giants, giants that have been publicised widely. I believe that once literature on Gothic Chess has been widely published and has been written about in many ways - by master strategists, wily tacticians, friendly starting-off tutors and the like - it will be as easy to learn as regular chess.

Caissus: You make me think of another question. In the future, if GC does grow, there'll probably be players who start on GC and then migrate to chess. (I bet everybody here has gone the other way so far.) But if and when that does happen, I wonder what their opinions of chess will be and how they will justify such a transition?

Don't get me wrong... I actually like Gothic Chess! And I think it will succeed up to a point, though not necessarily for the reasons surrounding draws as stated in the Ed's paper. I'd like to be upfront about why it's a good game, and I think it's got a slightly better chance of public success if the thing about the draws is NOT pushed as it has been in the past.

Walter Montego: You say, "It's a lot harder for people to play this game compared to regular Chess." If that is this case, won't that restrict the numbers who take up Gothic Chess? I'm well aware that Ed's business model is that his variant will become the mainstream version. But if what you say is true then it won't happen. The reason that people DON'T play regular Chess at the moment is not because it doesn't give them sufficient challenge! For many it's too complex already.

As I understand it, part of the raison d’être for the creation of Gothic Chess was to reduce the proportion of draws. Certainly in modern grandmaster chess there are very many draws. But is this necessarily a bad thing? I want to challenge that notion.

It is true that at the highest levels draws are very common. But who does this matter to? Does it matter to the grandmasters? Or, if we are honest, does it really matter more to us, the spectators, the readers of chess journals, the Class A to Class D players that populate the chess clubs throughout the world? We like the action. We like to see a win. But how do the players feel about it?

Here’s my honest opinion. I’m a serious club player, currently restarting chess after a gap of more than a decade, and if I look at the games I’ve played over the years in matches, leagues and tournaments, which games have given me the greatest satisfaction? Very definitely, the games I have enjoyed most have been the hard fought draws. For me there is a much greater satisfaction in the struggle with a worthy opponent where both are really trying to win but that eventually ends in impasse, than my taking advantage of some blunder and getting a slightly hollow victory.

Chess games at the level of the great masses are lost rather than won, and a draw can often show that both players played well. So why would I be interested in a chess variant that claimed to reduce the possibility of my enjoying what for me are the best kind of games? If the game doesn’t stand on its own two feet and instead has to compare itself to its parent to justify its existence then it’s a poor kind of game.