naughtypawn: No, I don't know any European sources for that, but that does not mean that they would not exist. But maybe following Caissa page could give you some additional ideas: http://www.spezialschach.de/ or also Dr. Henk van Haeringen's Superchess page http://www.superchess.nl/

SMIRF Engine: Thanks for the answer. I will visit those websites.

I have sad news to report : David Pritchard, for whose second edition of the Encyclopedia of Chess Variants I collected games here, has died accidentally on December 11. A big part of the book was already written, but I have of course no idea whether someone will finish the huge work that he was doing. I will forward here the information I might get about that.

Among the great games collected here, a few of them may still be published in another way, either in the magazine "Variant Chess", either on my website. Again, if it happens I will inform the players who provided me with the games.

Thank you one more time to all contributors.

David Pritchard: A link to a short obituary

You will find the result of the voting at:

http://www.chessvariants.org/contests/10/finalvoting.html

Thanks to all, who participated in this voting!

Reinhard.

Starts January 12th. Two games each.

http://brainking.com/en/Tournaments?trg=12909&trnst=0

SMIRF Engine: Congratulations Reinhard! CRC is indeed very good idea....!

Pythagoras: Congrats to those, who selected this interesting chess variant CRC by their votings! ;-)

Now I wait when and where to propose my Taboo Chess idea.

Here and on www.chessvariants.com/org and please hurry up! I'm curious.... You've explained me the basics but i want to see the whole concept.....!

Pythagoras: There still is some time needed. After a lot of unproductive quarrels end of last year I had serious trouble with my PC. Now I am nearly finished with reinstalling systems, development tools and backups on a very changed hardware, which is not at all faster than before for current SMIRF, but prepared for multiprocessing (2 core).

At http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachsmirf_e.html there a new beta version of SMIRF (free usable in January) could be downloaded. It should be able to also play MBC now, but it of course needs test reports. The necessary new PGN still is different from Brainking's for MBC, where some matching changes might be helpful and warmly wellcomed.

Unfortunately there is again a problem with this beta version as it plays instantly every move....
What should we put for license keys to work properly until February....?

Pythagoras: I wonder about that. It should be:

User=Test Smirf free until 2006-01-31
KeyGUI=5f9a33eb eabba58e
KeyEngine=14d91d36 ca3fcd96

There might two things happened:
a) you have not initially deleted the outdated key,
b) you have not got the most actual files.

P.S.: Smirf Engine has been updated to version 1.47 fixing an error in MBC promotion piece codes.

Now it works.....I've install the new beta on a new folder and just that!

Fencer: Filip,

As you know when you started your own site, at one point there were some problems with BrainKing being up all of the time. On GothicChessLive.com there are similar "growing pains." In the case of the SMIRF operator, I believe he is the one who was experiencing problems disconnecting. The site does not have a feature to automatically restore games so it is up to the players to do so.

Reinhard was asking his opponent so start the clocks with less time than he had when they left, because a Fischer "+25 seconds" was added with each move. His opponent did not have a move list displayed, so he needed Reinhard to relay the moves. His opponent wanted to start the clocks where they were, and just let any added time to run down before the next move was made. Reinahrd did not want to do this. His opponent finally gave in to his requests and they replayed the game. Reinhard typed a wrong move once, so they had to start over. Reinahrd made a wrong move when he was entering his own move, so there was a need to start over again. All during this, it was Reinahrd's turn to move in a difficult position, so SMIRF could have been searching. So, his opponent said "since so much time elapsed since my move, what is the SMIRF move?" At this point it was 7 minutes since his opponent had moved. It should be noted this opponent also had a 12 minute time advantage with less than half an hour left in the game. SMIRF refused to say what move he had made. Finally, the game was restored, and because of the relaying of moves by typing and the request to start with less time, SMIRF had 11 minutes more on his clock that at the time of the disconnect, and his opponent has 4 minutes less than was on his clock. His opponent was typing up a suggestion when SMIRF offered a draw. Since the position was finally restored correctly, his opponent did not accept the draw. Again, I remind all that SMIRF has more time on his clock, the opponent less, and it was still SMIRF's turn to move. And what did SMIRF do? He resigned.

SMIRF also resigned a game in a tough position against Zillions when a disconnect occurred, but this disconnect was the server losing its connection so it was not his fault. It is strange that all of these resignations occurred after SMIRF lost a 109 move game to the ChessV program which you can see here: http://www.gothicchesslive.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=444

This basically eliminated SMIRF's chances of winning the event, despite scoring 1-1 against last year's winner, Gothic Vortex. SMIRF also left a previous game in progress against ChessV, which Ed Trice declared a draw though it is clear SMIRF had a real chance to lose this game too as it was behind in time and its evaluation was overly optimistic. This same over-optimism cost SMIRF an easy draw in that 109 move game, ChessV mentioned several times that the game was a draw, and all such implicit offers were refused by Reinhard. He played on, then lost, then this behavior of "quitting to save face" emerged.

SMIRF has also done the same thing to me here on BrainKing. When I was playing in the World Open last year, I took some vacation days. I made a few moves against other opponents, but did not make move #1 against him at the start of a finals section, and he resigned his game against me and the other player in the finals section who WAS NOT even on vacation!

I mention this so you have a fuller version of the story and know more about Reinhard. When he does not get his way, he quits.

ChessCarpenter: I have commented all this where it belongs to: in Ed Trice's GC forum. There is no need to repeat the discussion here. If others may think to have the right to retard games, I am convinced to have the right to resign. I have no motivation to play kindergarden games, mainly caused by a system, which does not allow to simply reenter a broken game and by players, when endlessly worrying about seconds, where time frames cannot be rebuilt exactly at all.

P.S.: Who is interested in details should inspect http://s13.invisionfree.com/Gothic_Chess_Forum/index.php (GC forum), or otherwise write to me directly. You will find there, that I have tried to suggest a hopefully fair modus operandi for such situations, which ignoringly has been answered by even more pressure on me, what lead me to disengage at GothicChess.

ChessCarpenter and SMIRF Engine: As suggested, this discussion should not continue here. I will allow, however, SMIRF a brief explanation if he so desires and then that will be the end of it. After the reply, if one comes, I will review what has been said and ensure that it does not include personal attacks. I would ask you both to review what you have written (or will write) in this light.

WhisperzQ: My reply was to Fencer...in response to his post of Reinhard's.

Here is something I think everyone will like. Remember all of the talk about the rating system on here? Well, Ed Trice captured all of the games and re-rated them all in the same date order that they were played. He used the Glicko system which is even more accurate than the Elo rating system most people know about. Glicko uses 2 numbers per player, one for your rating, and another that measures the rating accuracy, which is also known as Rating Deviation. The more you play, the more accurate your rating becomes. So if you beat an 1800 player with a more accurate rating, you get more points that if you beat a player with the same rating that is not as accurate.

The re-rating took place in November 2005 and here are the results if you want to see what your "real" rating would be:

http://gothicchess.com/bk_archive.html

Eventually the games will be linked up as well.

ChessCarpenter: According to my (and not only mine) past experiences, I have much more reasons to trust Reinhard, not Edward.

Fencer: Thank you for your words, but to avoid misunderstandings: Ed for sure had to be interested to have his event completed, but finally put too much pressure on me. The main problem had been, that it was completely left to the participants, how to reconstruct a broken game, having no assistance by the system for that, which moreover was crashing at e.p. captures. Nevertheless the participants knew about that and thus should cooperate appropriately during such reenterings. Thus the reason for my resigns mainly had been the behaviour of a special participant during such repair situations.

Fencer: Filip,

Reinahrd left because of another person and it had nothing to do with Ed. My point is he LEFT rather than try and resolve the issues. And this has been my past experience (and not only mine.)

SMIRF Engine: Reinhard, you were just asked to replay the game. Ed was more than fair. You left a game when you were far behind in time, and you did not come back. Ed did not forfeit your game, which he should have. He GAVE you a draw, which upset his opponent. If anything, Ed took the pressure for this decision so SMIRF could stay in the running.

I don't see how you can claim Ed pressured you. You also resigned a game against Zillions that was a disconnect, and the operator was BrainKing's Chessmaster1000 who I think is also Pythagoras (I hope I am right on this.) He did not pressure you and he wanted to replay the game, instead, you quit. In another game, again you resigned. After this third time, no matter what the reasons were, you were asked to apologize for your behavior, and that was all. In baseball, you get 3 strikes, then you are out. Here all you had to do was say you were sorry (for ruining the whole tournament) and then replay the games, and all would have been forgiven.

Was this too much to ask? You quit 3 times, after all, and the International Computer Games Association Journal was asking Ed for daily updates. They, and also Chessville.com, are now unable to do a report on the 2005 Gothic Chess Computer World Championship, and they have waited for this for months!

Look at the great article that was done last year:

http://www.chessville.com/GothicChess/ComputerWorldChampionships.htm

And you talk about "pressure?" It does not make sense.
You quit. You quit again. You quit a third time. Ed asked you to say you are sorry.
You didn't, you blamed everyone else for your problems.

I see nothing resembling pressure, unless you are talking about how you put in on yourself.

ChessCarpenter: I don't care what you and/or Ed did on another site. I don't care who resigned what game for what reason. Ed wore out his welcome here long ago, but let's not go down that road. Although I am not a moderator here, I'm sure I speak for several people when I ask you to PLEASE take your discussion to an appropriate place.

Thad: I'm actually quite interested

ChessCarpenter: I do not want to bore the members of this site by addressing details, which are unkown here. But one point indeed seems to need clarification. This is concerning the repeated assumption, it would have been easy there to continue a broken game. This has not been the case at all within the GC tournament. The missing of a publised how-to for such occurences has lead to unnecessary quarrels and offendings. Imagine how frustrating it is to argue through such stressing situations using a foreign language to rebuild a game, where your opponent is blocking, moreover even not having a game notation at his hands.

Why there has not been provided a documented modus operandi for such cases? I finally have worked out such a rule set and tried to suggest that at the GC forum. The result of that approach has been a threatening to be excluded from GC live, which helped not at all to have broken games fairly rebuilt.

pawnme: me too, it beats reading..umm..NOTHING! But GC is gone and i don't miss it now that embassy chess is here, it's just as good, but patentless!

redsales: please do not forget, that the Embassy Chess implemetation is not yet completed here. Let me mention some points to this:

a) there are other piece letters used: M for Marshall (=C Chancellor in CRC), C for Cardinal (=A Archbishop in CRC or =J Janus in Janus Chess),
b) the castling moves should be encoded as O-O-O for the b-side (Queen side) castling, O-O for the h-side (King side) castling,
c) in the PGN setup X-FEN there should an 'm' be used preceeding the castling information to symbolize the mirrored King's target fields at castlings.

SMIRF Engine: I would like to correct you - the Embassy Chess implementation is completed here because the game is playable with no bugs or problems. The points you highlight are only minor issues which don't affect the game itself. Of course, they will be fixed as soon as possible anyway.

Fencer: Your internal view to this is quite correct of course. It works on your site. Nevertheless it is very important (especially during the early stage of a new variant) to avoid misunderstandings. Isolated solutions could lead to strange formalism like in Janus Chess (which has been out of our responsibility), where its castling move encoding has been defined contradicting to e.g. the Chess960 or CRC view. Thus it is important to learn about differences, whether they have been caused by another view (which then should be discussed and solved), by misunderstandings (which should be early cleared), or simply by the stage of realisation. Of course I am also not hesitating to modify my SMIRF implementation, if there would be a need to. There finally should be an exportable compatible solution for Embassy everywhere. Thank you for showing your good will!

We have now four games with AB`s/Janus : CRC, Grande Chess, Embassy Chess and Janus Chess and three of them have the same symbol for the knight/bishop piece except Janus Chess.

Would it not make sense to change now the symbol for the Janus according to the other three games?

Caissus: Or vice versa...I'd like the janus to replace the archbishop. :)

Pedro Martínez: Oh no, please, do not even think of replacing with that evil-looking Janus piece, the powerful looking Archbishop....!

Pedro Martínez: it would be nice to have a 2 headed piece instead of the current one. does anyone else think it looks like a dog?

Pythagoras: I agree, the pieces are very good as they are

I for one want M for Marshall and C for Cardinal. Grand Chess was made up in 1972. Seeing how no one uses Bird's names for the pieces, Guard and Equerry, and I've yet to hear precisely what Capablanca called them as he changed their names while putting out different versions of his Chess, I believe they are better names and should be the ones used.

As for the icons themselves, I agree about the Janus looking like a dog. In fact Cassius and I had some fun at the poor puppy's expense quite awhile back on the Janus Chess discussion board.
http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=34&bscx=254784#254784

Archbishop makes the most sense for the piece that moves like a bishop & rook. Of course, using that convention, the other piece should be called an archknight. ;-)

Thad: Archbishop = Bishop + Knight and not Bishop + Rook.....

Thad: For CRC I made (once upon a time) the proposal: A = Archangel (two swords as symbol, as defending the paradise) C = Centaur (tower upon a horseshoe) with its horse nature downside. This could be seen within SMIRF or at: http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachveri1_e.html

Kipling: i thought it was a dalmatian!

Pythagoras: Oops, right, my bad. Those names are more confusing than I thought! ;-)

SMIRF Engine: Why does everyone make this so hard. How about using the term "Archbishop" from CRC and "Marshal" for Grand Chess, and eliminate the "C" problem once and for all?

Cpaul_d2004

cpaul_d2004: The problem may base in its historical roots. Also the fact, that 10x8 chess is not played that much than 8x8 chess, might have lead to a lack of experiences compared to the claimed importance of underlaying ideas.

My arguments are more intended to enhance the distinguishability of pieces' symbols. Still symbols unnecessarily seem to be very related to Knight and Bishop, which is of no benefit for 10x8 chess at all.

See also my (German language) article in Wikipedia http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capablanca-Random-Chess about CRC.

My last game of Gothic Chess on this site is listed as Embassey Chess;which is not Quite as a complete or exciting a game as Gothic Chess. Gothic Chess being the best Chess game ever invented. I realize the child-like feud that got Gothic Chess removed could have been avoided if Ed Trice had not been insistant on his Patent and ignored the higher principle of getting as much expossure for Gothic Chess as possible. He would have realized much greater sales of Gothic Chess material that way;even though he would have had to surrender enforcing his patent. As it now stands he has most likely religated Gothic Chess to forever becoming an also ran competitor of the more inferior 8x8 regular boring and drawish game 8x8 has become;due to overstudy and overplay.

tedbarber: of the more inferior 8x8 regular boring and drawish game 8x8 has become;due to overstudy and overplay.

No,no,no....Just a little more respect for the game of the games would be appreciated.....!
I agree that Gothic Chess is an excellent game too, and i like it almost as i like Chess or better, but in order to replace Chess many things have to happen and many many years have to pass, if ever of course.....

Pythagoras: I do play,coach,and like 8x8 chess;I just consider Gothic much superior.

If you give the reasons for that, i can argue about it a bit.....:-)

tedbarber: I admit it is your right to claim Gothic is superior to Chess 8x8 hence you could admit, that in my opinion, Embassy is at least equal to Gothic and that Shogi, Xiangqi are more exciting than the two first mentionned.
Conclusion: what is the meaning of those declarations? Nostalgy??

SMIRF Engine: I'd be glad to but I do not speak, or read, German. Is there an English link to translate it?

Pythagoras: My reason is Gothic introduced a balanced game along with th missing peice combination found in the Archbishop and Chancellor that 8x8 lacked by having only the Queen as a combination peice;thereby making a much faster game with greater Tactical and Stratigic possibilities. Be that as it may;I simily meant to point out that the feud that got Gothic Chess removed cost everyone that likes playing it. But it cost Ed Trice much more than he could gain by insisting on royalties;when availability of playing sites gets hurt. It makes you wonder whether he is more interested in profits than making Gothic Chess popular. If so he has defeated that purpose. I never meant to start a debate about the merits of Gothic Chess verses 8x8 Chess.