mahavrilla:How does one generate an acceptable random position in Capablanca chess without a computer?

I suggest using a standard 6 sided die.

1. First place all pawns on the 2th (7th for black) row. Then fill the first (eight for black) row using the rules below.


2. First place the a bishop on a white square using the following technique. Roll the die. If you roll a six, re-roll (keep re-rolling till you don't roll a six). Count that many white squares from the left and place the bishop there. Do the same thing for black squares.


3. Now we are going to place the queen and the archbishop. One of them has to be placed on a white square, the other on a black square. Roll the die; if you rolled even, the queen goes on white (and the archbishop on black), otherwise the queen goes on black (and the archbishop on white). Roll the die, re-roll a five and a six. Count that many white (or black depending on the odd/even roll) squares from the left, skipping squares containing a bishop, and place the queen. Do the same for the other coloured squares and the archbishop.


4. You now have six unoccupied squares left. Roll the die. Count that many unoccupied squares from the left. Place the Chancellor on this field.


5. Roll the die again, re-roll on a six. Count that many unoccupied squares from the left, place a knight here. Roll again, re-rolling on a five and a six. Count that many unoccupied squares from the left, place the other knight here.


6. You know have three unoccupied squares left. Place the king in the middle of the three. Place the rooks in the remaining two.

This requires at least 8 throws of the die, and 10.1 throws on average.

Jules: Because I'm sometimes away for a few days.

Chessmaster1000: I've a (short) list of players I no longer play as well, because they move too slowly. I don't mind if people move just before the time out every now and then, but I do mind if they make a habit out of it. If in a tournament I'm paired with such a slow mover - I resign at the first move (no rating loss that way). And yes, you've made the list as well. I'll finish our on-going games, but any new games you'll have easy wins.

harley: The UK is five hours ahead of EST/EDT (except for one or two weeks a year, as Europe and the US don't switch to/from daylight saving time on the same dates). So Thursday 9 PM EDT is Friday 2 AM BST.

Chessmaster1000: No logical European writes 2m08.

Oh, sure they do. Both in writing, and speech. Of course, there are variations in usuage between countries and languages. (Generalisation over all Europeans usually doesn't work out well).

Don't try to compare the "illogical" American and British way of writing the units with our international way.

Illogical is in the eye of the beholder. What's percieved as "logical" is just what one is used to.

I wonder why it's so difficult to the 2 aforementioned "illogical in this matter" countries to accept the S.I.

The UK has been metric for decades. But habits are hard to die. Europeans have the Euro for several years now, but in all countries, many people still use marks, franks, lires, guilders and pesatas in their heads. Not to mention that many European cookbooks still use 'cups' and 'teaspoons' for measurements.

Now back to chess variants please.

Chessmaster1000: Well, yes. The ' symbol is used to denote feet. (And " for inches). Just like Europeans write 2m08, an American writes 6'10.

Chessmaster1000: 6 feet 10 inch equals 2 metres, 8 centimeters, and 2.8 millimetres.

Fwiffo: I agree that the archbishop compared to the bishop gained more power than the chancellor compared to the rook. But since the rook has more power than the bishop to start with, this doesn't prove much.

I think the better question is, has the knight gained more power as the archbishop, or as the chancellor?

It's a win for black. It's a game of parity. Let the game consist of N numbers (i = 10 for the first example), x_0 .. x_N-1. Decompose each number in powers of 2: x_i = a_i,0 * 2^0 + a_i,1 * 2^1 + a_i,2 * 2^2 + ..... Now for 0 = j, look at the sums a_i,j, 0 = i < N. Call this sum A_j. A player wins if at the end of his turn, all A_j's are even. For the game 3464334643, we have A_0 = 4, A_1 = 6, A_2 = 6, and A_k for k > 2 is equal to 0. This means the person going second, black, wins.

4444444444 is also a win for black (this is very easy to see, black can always copy what white does). 8888800000 is a win for white - but not if he plays a8. In that case, black plays a1, resulting in 0888800000, which is a win for black.