Of more immediate interest to me would be an interface (like WinBoard, for example) that could seve as a digital Gothic chessboard and that could read and save moves in PGN format. However, I do think a strong chess engine would also be nice (to play against, practice with, and analyze with). I would be more interested in an extensive endgame tablebase than an extensive opening book, but I may be in the minority. A downside to having a strong Gothic Chess engine is that some would use it to play for them in online games (as happens with chess now).

A Gothic Chess program can help out in the sense that it will mature the game for all of us in all aspects of the game, not to mention being able to play a game at your own leisure against the program which is a huge plus! As far as cheating goes...the only answer will be to play "Over the Board" tournaments to see how strong players really are! Hopefully, one day this will come to pass as I for one would love to see people playing Gothic Chess as much as Chess.

On a different note I was just wondering why only myself and one other person have signed up for the 2003 Gothic World Championship...everyone seems to be interested in a $250 tournament, so what is $50 to at least win $2000 and at least a shot at winning $150 for your section...when I read about playing in this tournament I thought it was the best idea Ed could have. Is $50 that steep that no one wants to enter or are there other reasons?

Responding to Chesscarpenter on July 22: the reason I took so long signing up was the 4-day time limit. I have had to convince myself that I will check the games at least every other day. Many times when I am able to get to the computer, I call up BrainKing to find the site is "down." So I go off and read other sites, hit the e-mail, losing interest in checking BrianKing for an hour or two. Then my time is all gone, and so much for chess! If the reliability of BrainKing could be advanced a bit more, it would be more attractive. As it is, I don't know what causes the down time, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has to do with all the non-chess and non-GothicChess games being handled concurrently with the chess and Gothic games. If that is the case, then it might help out to separate the two: have one branch of the site for chess and Gothic games, which can remain active while the other branch of non-chess and non-Gothic games goes down for its frequently-needed maintenance. Is that a possibility, or am I just barking up the wrong tree?

I agree with Juangrande it would be more interested to have a good interface like winboard in standard chess than a strong engine.But there is no chance to get both, I asked the arena-programmer,arena is similar like winboard (http://www.playwitharena.com/),
and he answered that the expense is to big for only a few people who are playing these games.He refered to the weaker "Zillions".
But it is better too because I have no fun if my opponent (and I) have strong engines with 2500 Elo like Fritz or Chessmaster on both sides
That`s the reason why I am playing chessvariants and not standard chess!

Zillions is so weak it is not funny. I have found it makes losing moves as early as move 3 or 4 of its games. It often would push the same pawn twice in the opening, like d2-d4 then d4-d5, which is an immediate loss in about 99% of the cases! So, I have been structuring my entire opening repetoire to be "anti-Zillions", and I have yet to lose a game on here.

The reason I posed the question is because I am interested in the demand for such an engine.

For example, let's just say I were to put together a team of programmers to tackle the job of creating a program that can analyze over 250,000 positions per second (compare this to zillions at about 30,000 per second) that would have a great graphical user interface, an anti-Zillions opening book, some of my own opening cooks and improvements to games I have seen played by the "top 10" on here, do you think anyone would want to buy it?

What features would you want to see in it?

The reason I ask is because some discussion is currently going on. If the playing population on here could convince me it would be worth it, such a thing could be done, rather quickly too I might add.

And, for Janus chess fans, one small change to the starting position, and you have a Janus chess engine (although no opening book of course.)

Comments?

I'm all for it...I think being able to train either against a machine or with machine would quickly raise the level of play here. What's the cost? (sorry, I'm on a perpetually tight budget...)

I`d probably buy it if the price is reasonable.
To be able to use it as a virtual Gothic Chess board would be the most important feature to me.