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)
Hi Morphy72, the filtering is already implemented in Smirf. To do it manually would be frustrating. But a tool like the Smirf program is a usable solution.
Hi Caissus, who declared that 'standard'? I have seen some very different icons. Overmore the Queen still is not sybolized (which is good so) by a hybrid piece symbol combined from rook and bishop.
I think you would have seen my two symbols for Janus/Archbishop and Chancdellor. I have tried for long to find some distinct but gait associating icons. So the Janus is symbolized by crossed swords to point to the main moving directions and the enhenced power in short range.
The Smirf beta program has been updated to 0.7.2. I noticed that the logic when to use O-O-O or O-O is inverted in Janus Chess then normal. So I had to implement some additional changes ...
in FRC and CRC O-O is not always the short variant, same for Janus chess (I prosume). But if you target really to the side with less squares to be made empty the probability to have them empty earlier might by higher.
To discuss the method patent property of Gothic Chess is misleading. The 10x8 chess scene is not visited that dense by users. So it would be counterproductive to insist of that patent to be ok or not or whether it would make sense to establish a game patent at all. I do not intend to patent my random 10x8 variant, because I am convinced it would be making that subject even unattractive. And I am not willing to invest a lot of time in discussing questions of patenting games. But Ed Trice has made his own decision on Gothic Chess, and obviously it has been possible to get such a game patented in the USA. So live and let live.
There is a possibility to preview the uncomplete SMIRF program. But without having license keys it will only show a limited amount of its power, and it will often demand for looking into the license dialog. But who is willing to thest it nevertheless, see at: http://www.chessbox.de/beta.html Project Chronicle 2004-Sep-29
<well here is that part of code, with comments in mixed German and English, which creates FEN for FRC 1...960 or CRC 1...48000. The filtering of unwanted positions has to be done later. The castling rules are comparable to FRC, I do not know, what I shoul show additionally to that.
if (istCRC) {
// Vorzeichenwechsel beim CRC
nr = -nr;
// decide whether the queen should be set 1st
bool q_first = ((nr % 2) != 0);
nr /= 2;
// set the 1st piece by dividing 5 on bright
// (targeting at first row, white side)
PlatziereInFen(nr % 5,
q_first ? (DAME_SYM ^ TOLOW)
: (ERZBISCH_SYM ^ TOLOW), 0);
nr /= 5;
// set the 2nd piece by dividing 5 on dark
// (targeting at first row, white side)
PlatziereInFen(nr % 5,
q_first ? (ERZBISCH_SYM ^ TOLOW)
: (DAME_SYM ^ TOLOW), 1);
nr /= 5;
}
// set the bishop by dividing 4 on white fields
// (targeting at first row, white side)
PlatziereInFen(nr % 4, (LAEUFER_SYM ^ TOLOW), 0);
nr /= 4;
// set the bishop by dividing 4 on black fields
// (targeting at first row, white side)
PlatziereInFen(nr % 4, (LAEUFER_SYM ^ TOLOW), 1);
nr /= 4;
// set the queen or chancellor on a free field
// dividing 6
PlatziereInFen(nr % 6,
istCRC ? (KANZLER_SYM ^ TOLOW)
: (DAME_SYM ^ TOLOW) );
nr /= 6;
// calculate knight positions by nr and set them
pos = knight_pos[nr % 10];
for (int bit = 5; --bit >= 0; ) {
if ((pos & (1 < bit)) != 0)
PlatziereInFen(bit, (SPRINGER_SYM ^ TOLOW));
}
// set the remaining pieces, rooks and king
PlatziereInFen(2, (TURM_SYM ^ TOLOW));
PlatziereInFen(1, (KOENIG_SYM ^ TOLOW));
PlatziereInFen(0, (TURM_SYM ^ TOLOW));
CRC (or if you like it: FullChess) is not intended to undergo Ed Trice's GC patent, but it would like to give its fascinating 10x8 board possibilities to everybody. Thus it tries to avoid conflicts with the Gothic Chess starting array by demanding at least three differences in White's base line. I am not demanding more differences. They might be but there is no need to be more distinct. Only very few from the 48.000 initial unfiltered arrays are that related to GC to be therefore excluded. Most of the missing arrays are kicked off only because of having uncovered pawns.
This definition of CRC should cover the following goals:
a) creating an interesting drosophila for chess programmers
b) using Capablancas 10x8 Chess board geometry
c) using Capablancas piece set (incl. archbishop and chancellor)
d) applying rules aligned to Fischer Random Chess
e) avoiding conflicts to any claimed patents
The CRC rules are:
a) creating a starting position (one of 48.000):
1) the bishops have to be placed upon different colored
squares; same rule applies to the implicite bishop pieces:
queen and archbishop (aligned to FRC)
2) the king always has to be placed somewhere between the
rooks to enable castlings (aligned to FRC)
3) use only such positions without unprotected pawns (Chess)
b) describing a method of generating starting positions on
free squares by using a dice or random number generator:
1) select queen or the archbishop to be placed first (2x)
2) place the selected 1st piece upon a bright square (5x)
3) place the selected 2nd piece upon a dark square (5x)
4) one bishop has to be placed upon a bright square (4x)
5) one bishop has to be placed upon a dark square (4x)
6) one chancellor has to be placed upon a free square (6x)
7) one knight has to be placed upon a free square (5x)
8) one knight has to be placed upon a free square (4x)/2
9) set the king upon the center of three free squares left
11) set the rooks upon the both last free squares left
12) this establishes White's first row, the Black side
has to be built up symmetrically to this
13) place ten pawns similar to traditional chess in a row
14) skip this position if it has unprotected pawns or not
at least three positions in line 1 differently filled
compared to Gothic Chess, this finally gives about
21.259 distinct starting arrays.
c) nature of (asymmetric Fischer-) castlings:
1) castlings are (like in traditional chess) only valid
if neither the affected king or rook has been moved, or
there would be a need to jump over any third piece, or
the king would be in chess somewhere from his starting
position to his target field (both included). Therefore
all squares between king and its target square (included)
have to be free from third pieces, same applies to the
way the rook has to go to its target square.
2) the alpha-castling (O-O-O, White's left side):
like in FRC the king will be placed two rows distant
from the border (here c-file) and the rook at the next
inner neighboured square.
3) the omega-castling (O-O, White's right side):
like in FRC the king will be placed one row distant
from the border (here i-file) and the rook at the next
inner neighboured square.
d) performing castlings:
within a GUI try to move the king upon the related rook
or at least two squares into that direction; manually:
1) move the king outside of the board
2) move the rook to its end position (if need to)
3) move the king to his end position
e) extended FEN encoding:
1) the extended FRC-FEN could be used as a base
2) 'a'/'A' are used to identify archbishops
3) 'c'/'C' are used to identify chancellors
4) '9' is used to mark nine empty fields
5) '0' is used to mark ten empty fields
6) if a castling enabled rook is not the most outer one
at that side, the letter of his file has to be placed
immediately following his castling marker symbol, where
'q'/'Q' are used for the alpha-, 'k'/'K' for omega-side.
f) engine notation rules for castling moves:
According to UCI convention the castling moves should be
written by using both coordinates (source and target field)
of the involved king. But there are castlings, where the
king does only one or none simple step. In that cases the
castling should be distinguishable by appending a 'k', like
already practized in promotion moves to make them unique.
Overmore an engine should accept O-O or O-O-O (no zeroes),
but only use them, when the GUI would demand for such a
less precise notation.
Indeed, you are right! It proves that you have read my proposal, thank you! I will correct that mistake at once, that is because a German is using English ...
This definition of CRC should cover the following goals:
a) creating an interesting drosophila for chess programmers
b) using Capablancas 10x8 Chess board geometry
c) using Capablancas piece set (incl. archbishop and chancellor)
d) applying rules aligned to Fischer Random Chess
e) avoiding conflicts to any claimed patents
The CRC rules are:
a) creating a starting position (one of 48.000):
1) the bishops have to be placed upon different colored
squares; same rule applies to the implicite bishop pieces:
queen and archbishop (aligned to FRC)
2) the king always has to be placed somewhere between the
rooks to enable castlings (aligned to FRC)
3) use only such positions without unprotected pawns (Chess)
b) describing a method of generating starting positions on
free squares by using a dice or random number generator:
1) select queen or the archbishop to be placed first (2x)
2) place the selected 1st piece upon a bright square (5x)
3) place the selected 2nd piece upon a dark square (5x)
4) one bishop has to be placed upon a bright square (4x)
5) one bishop has to be placed upon a dark square (4x)
6) one chancellor has to be placed upon a free square (6x)
7) one knight has to be placed upon a free square (5x)
8) one knight has to be placed upon a free square (4x)/2
9) set the king upon the center of three free squares left
11) set the rooks upon the both last free squares left
12) this establishes White's first row, the Black side
has to be built up symmetrically to this
13) place ten pawns similar to traditional chess in a row
14) skip this position if it has unprotected pawns or at
least three positions in line 1 similar to Gothic Chess,
this finally gives about 21259 distinct starting arrays.
c) nature of (asymmetric Fischer-) castlings:
1) castlings are (like in traditional chess) only valid
if neither the affected king or rook has been moved, or
there would be a need to jump over any third piece, or
the king would be in chess somewhere from his starting
position to his target field (both included). Therefore
all squares between king and its target square (included)
have to be free from third pieces, same applies to the
way the rook has to go to its target square.
2) the alpha-castling (O-O-O, White's left side):
like in FRC the king will be placed two rows distant
from the border (here c-file) and the rook at the next
inner neighboured square.
3) the omega-castling (O-O, White's right side):
like in FRC the king will be placed one row distant
from the border (here i-file) and the rook at the next
inner neighboured square.
d) performing castlings:
within a GUI try to move the king upon the related rook
or at least two squares into that direction; manually:
1) move the king outside of the board
2) move the rook to its end position (if need to)
3) move the king to his end position
e) extended FEN encoding:
1) the extended FRC-FEN could be used as a base
2) 'a'/'A' are used to identify archbishops
3) 'c'/'C' are used to identify chancellors
4) '9' is used to mark nine empty fields
5) '0' is used to mark ten empty fields
6) if a castling enabled rook is not the most outer one
at that side, the letter of his file has to be placed
immediately following his castling marker symbol, where
'q'/'Q' are used for the alpha-, 'k'/'K' for omega-side.
(Because of the three black fields a1, c1, e1 which are
candidates for the queen's starting position, from White's
view the left alpha-side is more related to the queen
than the right side, according to the naming conventions
within traditional chess, and the majority of starting
positions will have the queen at the left alpha-side.)
f) engine notation rules for castling moves:
According to UCI convention the castling moves should be
written by using both coordinates (source and target field)
of the involved king. But there are castlings, where the
king does only one or none simple step. In that cases the
castling should be distinguishable by appending a 'k', like
already practized in promotion moves to make them unique.
Overmore an engine should accept O-O or O-O-O (no zeroes),
but only use them, when the GUI would demand for such a
less precise notation.
Describing a method of generating starting positions on
free squares by using a dice or random number generator:
1) select queen or the archbishop to be placed first (2x)
2) place the selected 1st piece upon a bright square (5x)
3) place the selected 2nd piece upon a dark square (5x)
4) one bishop has to be placed upon a bright square (4x)
5) one bishop has to be placed upon a dark square (4x)
6) one chancellor has to be placed upon a free square (6x)
7) one knight has to be placed upon a free square (5x)
8) one knight has to be placed upon a free square (4x)/2
9) set the king upon the center of three free squares left
11) set the rooks upon the both last free squares left
10) this establishes White's first row, the Black side
has to be built up symmetrically to this
11) place ten pawns similar to traditional chess in a row
12) skip this position if it has unprotected pawns or at
least three positions in line 1 similar to Gothic Chess,
this finally gives about 21259 distinct starting arrays.
On CRC: there are about 21259 selected positions from 48000. You seem to forget that Archbishop and Queen has to be placed on different colored squares by CRC rule. See for this also at: [http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachcrc_e.html]
Chess960 has been invented by Bobby Fischer and you should not change its rules because of respecting its inventor. The unprotected pawns there are a more cosmetic problem than in CRC where are more heavy sliding pieces. See Japanese Shogi having always three uncovered pawns at the beginning but nevertheless was played for centuries.
Well Smirf GUI is a great tool to have those positions generated. Moreover it can create all of those 48000 basic positions, which number is also identifying the selected 21xxx. There is a bidirectional identification of number and position as is in FRC, where I standardized all 960 arrays. Do you know my (German) book on FRC?
Well, Ed Trice is selling 10x8 chess sets, but I think most people - especially in that context - will use computer assistance. Thus Smirf is a good tool. It would be very frustrating to have a lot of manually dice rollings to end up often in an unwanted position.
Those 48000 numbers already are standardized.
FullChess has been my proposal to rename FRC. But Mr. Schmitt decided for Chess960, which is not a bad name at all. So I took back that proposal and gave it a new meaning to cover several 8x8 and 10x8 Variants within one engine and GUI. And the most creative part within that approach is the CRC invention. So why not use the name "FullChess", which has not existed before I created it?
To 1) interpreted as near to normal FEN as possible:
'w': white side to move
's': symmetrical (Janus) castlings (using b-file instead c-file)
'K': white (classical) King side castling (to i-file) possible
'Q': white (classical) Queen side castling (to b-file) possible
'k': black (classical) King side castling (to i-file) possible
'q': black (classical) Queen side castling (to b-file) possible
'-': no e.p. capture square active
'0': no move done for 50 moves draw count
'1': current move number
To 2)
I have definded that variant myself. So I decided when having a pool of 48000 positions to select only the most stable ones. I think 21xxx should be sufficient.
The name:
I called it CRC (Capablanca Random Chess) but I am open for good proposals. My original programming approach was called "FullChess", how about that?
I just have decided that Smirf will also support Janus Chess with its different symmetric castlings. This will extend the FEN string slightly the way I have suggested with an additional 's' for to state the presence of symmetric castlings. In that case also an Archbishop 'A' will be displayed as Janus 'J'. The FEN string then looks like the following one:
rjnbkqbnjr/pppppppppp/0/0/0/0/PPPPPPPPPP/ RJNBKQBNJR w sKQkq - 0 1
The Capablanca Random Chess also demands for Archbishop and Queen to be placed on different colored squares and for the avoiding of uncovered pawns. Thus about 21000 positions will result.
you are pointing to a direction which is not quite wrong. The argument has been, that Janus Chess would be a computer free zone and any thus Janus Chess aware computer programs would be negative. This has been told to me in a very harsh and insensible way, instead of honouring to be asked for a comment in that approach. I easily could have avoided any contact to that people, but instead I have been that polite to ask them for their thoughts on that. But my will to cooperate therein so has not payed at all.
I had been in connection with some Janus relevant german people, whether to enable Smirf to also play Janus Chess, but the reaction has been very negative.
To enable Janus Chess for playing will mean to extend the understanding of FEN strings targeting to also support the different symmetrically castlings.
I do not know whether there has been already proposals in that direction, but I would suggest to simply add a preceeding "s" before the castling block of a FEN string. With that it would be able to send an information to the engine to generate symmetrical castlings instead of the standard assymmetric castlings. (This would also give new possibilities to 8x8 chess.)
I see, your example is probably Janus Chess. Janus Chess has a different Queens side castling than canonically understood for chessboards 10x8 or 8x8. But except of this feature the just rebuilt Smirf GUI will support Janus PGN inputs, if the appropriate FEN is included (J will be interpreted as A, Archbishop).
Still I have not received a PGN file. So I tried to find one hier at this site. As I prosumed the local PGN file is not obeying the PGN format in two points: a) the game lines are not limited to about 80 chars each, b) the initial GC FEN string is missing.
If you would insert the matching FEN string [FEN "rnbqckabnr/pppppppppp/0/0/0/0/PPPPPPPPPP/RNBQCKA BNR w KQkq - 0 1"] (should be a constant for GC) and also enter line breaks Smirf is able to read such files.
I have not seen PGN code here. But as long as it obays the PGN convention to include a FEN string because of the GC starting array being different from 8x8 standard chess, it should work.
What has been the problem in trying Smirf for this?
please do not confuse the FullChess Editor (which is not playing any chess) with the well playing Smirf beta version. Of course it is intended to be sold as shareware, but there is no pricing published yet. I have to think it over. So please do not use the 2 Dollar/Euro PayPal button, which is intended for the FullChess Editor, but please email me directly (you will find a valid email address e.g. at the imprint of www.chessbox.com.