WhiteTower: Nope, but I am one step closer to bringing Fischer together with Kasparov to play Gothic Chess.

http://www.gothicchess.org/fischer_kasparov.html

Pythagoras et al: How's that?

WhisperzQ: Type it again, Whisperz.

A sigh is just a sigh, a typo just a typo ...

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.

WhiteTower: I can´t believe what I read... A typo is a typo. I wrote Cablanca; it was a mistake without importance. I really know how Capablanca is written better than people that don´t speak Spanish...

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

why? I don´t understand the joke very well. English is not my mogher tongue...

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!)

WhiteTower: ok. By the way, is it possible to play Gothic chess? I would like to try a couple of games

It is no longer available here, but you can go to Gothicchess.org to play.

pawnme: Or, even more directly, at:

www.GothicChessLive.com

If you do sign up, let us know what your name is on the site. Also, players are meeting at the discussion board to post game requests here:

http://s13.invisionfree.com/Gothic_Chess_Forum/index.php?showforum=8


And the first person who wins a game against me on a Tuesday gets $50, but so far, no winners (although I had as little as 2 seconds on my clock when I checkmated one player.)

I was wondering if anybody wanted to play live tonight there? If so, just go there. I am on board one.

I happen to like both of these games. Does anybody know what the main difference is between these 2 games besides the chanceller in Gothic? Does anybody think one better than the other for any reason?

mahavrilla:
Castling is different. It is done symmetrically. The a-side castling is written as O-O instead of O-O-O. As far as I know there are no patents on Janus. The representation of the Archbishop is replaced by a pointed dog, called Janus.

White is also at a disadvantage by moving first in Janus. I had a hard time drawing Mely as white, and a much easier time winning with Black. Tough to explain, but I just think white is practically in zugzwang in the beginning of the game.

Grim Reaper:White is also at a disadvantage by moving first in Janus.

No i don't think so. I or you or anyone can not prove anything of cource, and i understand that this was just your opinion, your feeling, about the game, but the fact you feel that you have troubles with white while with black not, doesn't prove nothing.........

Pythagoras:

Well, please send me your proof of the Pythagorrean Theorem, or evidence that the moon is NOT made out of green cheese.

What I stated was a belief based on my experience and I never offered anything more than that.

Mely holds close to an International Master title in chess, and is well-versed in Janus Chess also. I was down a Queen + 3 pawns vs. the Archbishop (Janus) while playing white because Black was able to run me out of good moves. It was like distance zugzwang. I was able to dispose of those pawns to get the draw, a difficult concept to realize. And, I was able to win with Black against Mely, again, a very tough competitor.

I would like to believe that never having suffered a loss in Janus while collecting a fair number of wins allows me the freedom to speculate that the game might be inherently easier to play from Black's perspective.

I am on the live site waiting for a game of Gothic if anyone wants to play.

And congrats to Andreas for winning a blitz game in 10 with 12 second increment against me yesterday. I reached what I thought was a very comfortable position, and the tide of the game turned almost instantly. It was a bizarre sort of game, I will post it when the webmaster emails it to me and I annotate it.

Grim Reaper: I would like to believe that never having suffered a loss in Janus while collecting a fair number of wins allows me the freedom to speculate that the game might be inherently easier to play from Black's perspective.

The above is much different from the:

White is also at a disadvantage by moving first in Janus

My opinion about Janus, although as like you, i dislike this game as it is too diagonal, is that it is well balanced, even though i have the same feeling -in a much lower degree- that black has something better.....

or evidence that the moon is NOT made out of green cheese.
Can you give me an evidence for the opposite....?
Only if you transfer me into the moon you can convince me and this is quite difficult.....

Pythagoras: Your word use, grammar, punctuation, and smilies, are very like Chessmaster1000.

Yep........
I thought it would be more than obvious.....

I am curious on this idea that Black has an advantage in Janus. Does he also have an advantage in Gothic chess? And if only in Janus, why not in Gothic? Are these claims supported by several statistics, or between 2 people, which could be explained away simply by style. Funny enough, I know of a chess player who always loses as white but wins as black!, because she studies only black defenses. :-) In short, how do GMs fair with black gainst white in Janus. I know that Leko, Korchnoi, and Yuspov play Janus. Does anybody know how to retrieve their results? I would think that the best way to know the answer to this question is to set up 2 powerful chess engines against each other. Interestingly, this problem of the first move lives in classical chess too, and is only solved by having the players play 2 game matches. This will always solve the problem if there were ever an instance of the first move proving to be advantagous or not.

For Chess there is the general idea that black has to fight (not hard) to gain equity first and then if he succeeds he can look for a win.
For Gothic Chess the same is not valid and both sides seems to have equal chances.
For Janus Ed Trice mainly and i -in a much smaller degree- have the opinion that Black has "something" better. I don't know what is this "something" but i can feel it.....Black seems to me, to have more attacking chances.....

In contrast to claimed unspecified advantages of Black within Janus Chess I am convinced of White being about 3/10 Pawn units ahead in its beginning. Similar statements have been done by chess players first being faced to some Chess960 / FRC starting arrays. Those statements simply reflect the absence of opening knowledge, thus merely prove to be caused by psychological effects without a real base.

Sumerian: That seems like an accurate statement. Janus seems way too complicated for its value on the first move to be decided at this point. But I was hoping their claims would go beyond the "feels" like black is better to a respected statistical statement. Ed did a good job arguing his case on the piece placement of Bird's chess, and why his suggested improvement works better. I was hoping for something along those lines.

mahavrilla:
S-1:That seems like an accurate statement.
S-2:Janus seems way too complicated for its value on the first move to be decided at this point.


You agree with the Sumerian's statement of having white a 3/10 Pawn starting advantage(S-1) AND you believe that Janus is way too complicated for any speculation about the starting advantage of any player(S-2)????????????????

That's crazy........!

Pythagoras: This is what I agreed with with from Sumerian:

"Those statements simply reflect the absence of opening knowledge, thus merely prove to be caused by psychological effects without a real base."

Take what you disagreed with and quailfy it with what I quoted.

Statistics
White won 1048 (48.92 %)
Black won 1035 (48.31 %)
------Draws 59 (2.75 %)

This supports, but doesn't prove, my belief that the game is equal for either side. There's always play two games with each player having each color to level it out too. Even in single game matches the results on this site look pretty even to me.

Who ever wanted to know, which Gothic Chess program might be the strongest, actually could watch a long-time fight between Gothic Vortex Gold and SMIRF Beta. Average thinking times are floating between 1/2 hour and several hours, thus the playing level is of course impressing. It is also interesting to see the evaluation functions differ sometimes more than one Pawn unit. You will find more on this and also interesting comments at: http://s13.invisionfree.com/Gothic_Chess_Forum/index.php

Chess:
White won 20172 (46.93 %)
Black won 20990 (48.83 %)
Draws 1817 (4.22 %)

The stats on this site do not generally represent the feeling about black vs white. Here black wins more than white, which is very unusual for chess.

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!

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

Nah, even after a billion of games here, the percentage of draws will be more or less the same......Why?
A-80%)Because the strength of most players is on beginner's level........
B-20%)There are many time-outs......

Phlorix and I are happy to announce the birth of our son Michel september 21. The baby and his mother are all rigt (and also the father!).

...one for each of his first magnificent thousand heartbeats!

noursix: félicitations!

If I understood well, Gothic chess will disappear from this
site to be replaced by Capablanca Random Chess. Is this well that?
If it is the case, we will not be able to play any more Gothic chess in turn based since there will be no more site which proposes it.
I saw that there is a site to play this game on line but in what relates to me, I prefer to play in turn based.
I thus find very damage this project of suppression.

pierot: You might try Grand Chess or Janus Chess. They are similiar games, though have major differences. Grand Chess uses the same pieces as Gothic Chess, but has a larger board and mobile Rooks from the beginning. Pawn promotion is different and there's no castling. Janus Chess has a piece called the Janus which identical to the Archbishop of Gothic Chess. Each player gets two Januses and is played on an 10 X 8 like Gothic Chess. There isn't ay piece like the Chancellor in Janus Chess.

I asked Fencer if he would add Embassy Chess. He said he would look into it. It is almost the same game as Gothic Chess though it is not patented. The King and Chancellors are switched in starting position. The other change is the Chancellor is named Marshall and the Archbishop is the Cardinal. Castling works the same with the King moving three squares towards the Rook. So this will have a slight difference in end position from the Gothic Chess set up since the King starts one square to the side as compared to Gothic Chess. The game was created to fix the flaws of Bird's and Capablanca's set ups using the same pieces as was Gothic Chess.

pierot: You are correct. Fencer & the guy who holds the patent for Gothic Chess cannot come to an agreement. The guy is known to rub a lot of people the wrong way. It's sad that things cannot be worked out, but we are better off without Gothic Chess AND the baggage that comes with it than we are being forced to dance thru the patent holder's hoops.

noursix: Congrats! Sleep well in the future :-)

Is this someone knows a internet link of a site which proposes a list
of openings for Janus chess?

I downloaded this morning the version of test of SMIRF.
To give me an idea of the level of this program, I made play SMIRF
against Zillions for the game of Janus chess with the adjustment of 30 sec. by move.
I was very surprised to note that after about the 20 first moves, Zillions had taken the advantage clearly.
Can you explain me the reasons?

jolat:
Which version (via Help -> About ...), Cache size, any of the programs pondering?

When a testing period has expired or no user key is present, SMIRF answers immediately (low quality).

SMIRF Engine:
As I wrote in my preceding message, I downloaded SMIRF this morning.
Here provided indications in "Help" --> "About" :
Version 1.1.0-0251-Beta
Test Smirf free until 2005/09/30

jolat: there are (hidden) possibilities to download earlier versions, thus it is important to know details.

Hard to say without having the game. Maybe Zillions is better. ;-)

What do you want to say?
Don't I have the last version?
I specify that at the 20° move against Zillions, SMIRF lost a Bishop against a Pawn.

jolat:
Your version is the current beta.

If you would post the PGN (Edit -> Copy as -> PGN, then insert it here), I will check it.

SMIRF Engine:
OK, below the PGN of a second second (I had not saved the
first). For this second, I reversed the colors: SMIRF has the blacks
for this game.
As for the first game, I regulated the two programs with 30 sec. per move.
I stopped the game at the 40° move because SMIRF had
already a Rook + 2 pawns in less.

[Event "SmirfGUI Computerchess Game"]
[Site "Jolat"]
[Date "2005.09.29"]
[Time "15:25:16"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Test Smirf free until 2005/09/30"]
[Black "Test Smirf free until 2005/09/30"]
[Result "*"]
[Annotator "Test Smirf free until 2005/09/30"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "rjnbkqbnjr/pppppppppp/10/10/10/10/PPPPPPPPPP/RJN
BKQBNJR w sKQkq - 0 1"]

{The time limit has been passed.} 1. Jh3 f6 {(10.01) -0.212} 2. e3 Be6 {(08.34)
+0.074} 3. Bg4 Bxg4 {(11.00) +0.068} 4. Jxg4 Ng6 {(09.18) +0.070} 5. Jc3 Nd6
{(07.05=) +0.358} 6. Nd3 Jc6 {(10.04+) +0.327} 7. Nb4 Je4 {(10.02) +0.314} 8.
Jxe4 Nxe4 {(12.14) -1.081} 9. Qb5 e6 {(11.01) -1.595} 10. Qxb7 a5 {(09.27)
-1.172} 11. Nd3 f5 {(10.14) -5.279} 12. Je2 Jj6 {(10.01) -5.313} 13. Qxa8 Jh4
{(09.14=) -5.552} 14. Qxa5 Jxi2 {(08.31) -4.513} 15. Ni3 Bxi3 {(09.35) -4.826}
16. Ri1 Jh4 {(10.46) -5.758} 17. Rxi3 Jxg2+ {(09.17) -5.608} 18. Kd1 Kd8
{(09.39) -5.847} 19. f3 Nd6 {(10.01) -7.064} 20. Nc5 Nh4 {(08.25) -8.466} 21.
Rxi7 Jxf3 {(10.01) -7.814} 22. Jxf3 Nxf3 {(12.01=) -8.349} 23. Qa8+ Nc8
{(13.01=) -8.611} 24. Qxf3 Qxc5 {(12.02) -8.970} 25. Qi3+ Ke8 {(12.02+) -9.259}
26. Ri8+ Rxi8 {(14.01=) -8.616} 27. Qxi8+ Qf8 {(13.01=) -8.927} 28. Qxh7 Nd6
{(12.06=) -8.622} 29. Qxj7 Qf6 {(11.09) -8.807} 30. d4 Qg5 {(12.25) -8.234} 31.
Bf2 Ne4 {(12.02+) -8.322} 32. Qj3+ Kf8 {(13.01) -7.535} 33. Ke2 Qg2 {(12.17)
-7.546} 34. Qj8+ Ke7 {(14.01) -7.220} 35. Qj6 Qxh2 {(11.29) -6.797} 36. Qh4+
Qxh4 {(16.01=) -8.189} 37. Bxh4+ g5 {(15.01) -8.209} 38. Bi3 Ke8 {(15.02=)
-8.198} 39. Bh2 g4 {(14.02=) -8.376} 40. Bxc7 d6 {(13.01) -8.621} *