WhisperzQ: C'mon, this board was dead before this exchange :)

Fwiffo: There is no such board in BrainKing. The current regime doesn't like retrograding :)

JinkyOng: I'd visit the ranking pages for FRC if I were you!

Pedro Martínez: Exactly ;)

ColonelCrockett: Nobody can really forget GC but with MBC around, who needs GC anyway? ;)

ColonelCrockett: Not hard to forget about GC when you have MBC ;)

HalfPawn: Now why would anyone want to know that? Since the answer is easily "googleable", isn't Embassy well-supported and playable here as it is?

tedbarber:

- What is the exact flaw in the placement of major pieces in Embassy Chess?
- Capablanca Chess is certainly inferior to CRC, as it leaves unprotetcted pieces at startup. However, CRC cannot be generally compared with Capablanca or other 8x10 chess variants, as it was created for a very specific reason: avoiding drawn games through randomization of the initial position (Reinhard, please correct me if I'm wrong)

Fencer: Please let us know if you intend to publish any of it or a summary at least :)

ChessCarpenter: ... and they defeated each other as BLACK! Let's see if this trend goes on.

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 :)

SMIRF Engine: Not even "preferred" opening moves for the first couple of plies? ;)

Walter Montego: In Greece we use periods as thousand separators and commas as decimal points. Is it that important? :)

Pythagoras: Maybe the reason is the "complete information" attribute that Backgammon carries? (as discussed in the Backgammon board)

Walter Montego: Therefore:

- Human chess should be "restricted" to FRC/CRC
- Computer chess should be "restricted" to Chess/Gothic Chess

:) Wouldn't that be sweet?...

ColonelCrockett: Sorry for butting in, but if Pythagoras (formerly known as ChessMaster1000) who has defeated Gothic Vortex and other engines in the recent past, says that it will happen, I'm pretty sure he wasn't shooting his own foot ;) But myself, I keep my reservations about this - so it's up to Pythagoras to answer you obviously!

Walter Montego: Exactly my line of thought as well. I did think that Reinhard was being a bit too "mathematical" with his assertions, without applying some further factors in the process :)

SMIRF Engine: But what if the computing power available today and later will bring the same faults to them that standard chess now has? Or is that a very distant future? :)

WhisperQ: The link is slightly screwed :)

redsales: Right on.

Anyway, the only way we can get as close as possible to any comparison between them is to make them play each other according to software like ChessMasterSomeThousand, where, I think, chess personalities are programmed... I know, it's not anything conclusive, but I'd like to know what happens :)

SMIRF Engine: Bug reporters, start your keyboards!

SMIRF Engine: Sorry to butt in, but if your program is even half well-structured, no new code introduction should affect any core functionality... or your core needs redesigning! :)

CardinalFlight: That would be LAW of great numbers, sorry :)

CardinalFlight: I would say the percentage of DRAWS is unusually low :) But give it a few more millions of games and the percentages will be closer - hail to the low of great numbers!

pawnme: Or, even more directly, at:

www.GothicChessLive.com

naughtypawn: After successful lobbying (not really!) it does no longer refer to a movie title but to a Cuban chess player (except for the rest of it, which, I suppose, was the trade-off, thanks to Grim Reaper!)

naughtypawn: Well, the Chess Variants (10x8) headline is now real-world-compliant :)

OK, if you gonna mess up Capablanca, whah not turn da others into Janes Chess and Gotham Chess as well?

Let's get serious, it's Capablanca Random Chess, there's no S in Capablanca.

Grim Reaper: And actually, you invented Gotham Chess, right? :)

Pythagoras: Well spotted!

Grim Reaper: Yes, maybe in CowPlay you were right, but you see, in both cases, the owner of the site removed it because you somehow leveraged them to do so, not because they didn't like Gothic Chess or something... Whatever the reason in each case, you don't make friends like that... Surely there could be a compromise somehow...

tedbarber: The answer is no. There was another site with this setup that was proud to introduce Gothic Chess to its members, but [coughs and stares at Ed] it was also removed by the site owner...

Grim Reaper: It doesn't. But under the hood, BrainKing uses Java to generate all these nice pages we love so much :)

Grim Reaper: Errr... yes, it does.

Fencer: BTW can "soon" become a bit less vague, please? Isn't it like a patch of the BrainKing Java code for FRC on the Gothic Chess setup?

Yes, I know it's never THAT easy, but...

So, please, no 30 days/move silliness, OK? :)

Quite brave of Fencer to go that far. At least Ed's live site might get more traffic this way :)

Grim Reaper: Come on, Ed, you calculated that mate in two-hundred-something moves, this one should be easy-peasy :)

Grim Reaper: Mate in... ?

andreas: I heard most of it this morning before heading off to work. It was mostly e-mail questions by the chess.fm public, who were obviously curious about Gothic Chess :) In the end, the presenter put it appropriately: "We can only have this kind of topic once a year, as most of our listeners are interested in standard chess." (or something along those lines)

The listeners seemed to ask plenty of varying questions, mentioning "why not 10x10?" or "what about making it like FRC?" or "what differences to Bird/Capablanca?" etc.

Ed was guite thorough, even quoting specific endgame URLs from his website :)

fungame: "Ideal for pawns who don't like to spend years waiting for tournament to finish or for players who like to play fast."

You must be kidding or you don't remember when you were a pawn - if you ever were. Even when your tournament games as a pawn are over, you still have to wait until EVERYBODY ELSE has finished, NOT until YOU have finished and have either:

- won your group and, therefore, are happy to wait next round, or
- been eliminated and SHOULD be allowed to go and sign up to your next tournament, since you have no more contribution or influence on the present tournament.

I mean REALLY!!!

Sumerian: "Is your Gothic Vortex even still subject for improvements (beside of providing more looking-up information)?."

Even I can tell, since Chessmaster1000 could beat Gothic Vortex very nicely, that the latter should still have some room for improvement ;)

tedbarber: So BrainKing should be JUST like all other chess sites?!? tsk tsk tsk...

BuilderQ: no, and it looks like a stupid discussion board issue was to blame...

I suppose any and all such questions would be easily answerable by Mr Trice, if he decided to grace this board with his presence again...

As a Pawn, I admit we are not entitled to as many rights as paying members. In any case, maybe Fencer should just make moderating rules such that there is never any dispute as to who can ban who, who can become moderator etc. It's just too loose as it is now...

A good site should have a solid set of rules that everyone WILL follow or not be part of the site. I've written the main policy document for an Internet Relay Chat network in the past and, believe me, there are a LOT of things that need to be taken care of in that environment. In the end, IRC operators (like discussion board moderators here) have an effective tool to police an otherwise unmanageable mess...

Only after Ed has been officially contacted for licensing ;)

Not really, there's Chessbase Light, which is free, and then there's the full Chessbase with more capabilities - surely you could do the same, I mean Chessbase's success proves it can be given away for free in a cut-down version...

Maybe this is a good time, then, to have a preview of the minimum requirements for this next, high-end version?

... now isn't that a much nicer deviation from the board's topic? ;)