JinkyOng: you can also visit the "waiting games" or start some yourself.

SMIRF Engine: maybe both programs were running at the same time?

noursix: félicitations!

Grim Reaper: would be interresting to watch, but to have a fair comparison of softwares you should run both on the same hardware.

EdTrice: (and Chessmaster1000) : yes, there are extra figures, but for a single problem, say KQP-KQ, or some such not involving C or A, these don't come into calculation.

I'm not sure how your tables are set up. as for the ones for regular chess, the calculation ends with a capture or conversion, and the table points to a simpler table.

so the "only" difference is the board size, an increase of 100/64 in the number of squares. this is still considerable: for a single table of 5 distinct figures, in reg chess that comes to 64 * 63 * 62 * 61 * 60 ~ 10^9 initial positions, vs 100 * 99 * 98 * 97* 96 ~ 10^10 initial positions for gothic, again, not counting illegal positions, checks or symmetries. that is still a factor of 10. and, of course, the fact that a free central Q has 27 moves in reg chess vs 30 in gothic.

EdTrice: what makes such a difference to regular chess? ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/TB gives full 5 figure tables, and are well on the way to finish 6 figure tables, with pawns included. of the 5 figure tables, the biggest is KRP-KQ, with 250 megs total. the 6 figure tables run into several gigs. do the extra squares account for the difference?

gotti2000: if you want to stick to tradition, pick any name but translations for "cardinal" and "archbishop". after all, in german, all the piece names (except king) are different from the english equivalents. the same goes for french, by the way.

maybe you should change your name to LongWait

has anyone patented it yet? nobody move until I see my lawyer

something like quid custodiet ipsos custodes?

just curious: what would happen if Walter and bwild nuked, I mean banned each other simultaneously? would the GC board then just vanish in a puff of logic?

this looks like a fairy chess problem.
you could even have "better" conditions: both sides have the 10 pawns, and no pawn will have moved. the exchanging is done by the knights, or in gothic also by the A and C.

but were they recompiled from source? optimisers can make big differences. if you use old binaries, on new machines, the tests aren't conclusive.

then, another thought: those are computer programs. that means, that they'll do the same things with the same input (random functions excluded). I think that even a small difference in computer strength would be enough to provide the sort of results you show. for example: say that chess1.0 has an elo of 1800, chess2.0 an elo of 1850. among humans, you'd expect results like 12-8; with computers results such as 20-0 aren't surprising.

a good test would be to let the 2 programs play against some humans with a comparable strength.

<don't forget that even a "baby PC-Chess programs of 1991-1992" running on a 2+ gigahertz processor will do "slightly" better than the same program running on the ancestor 16bit machine.

actually I don't know if the software has made that many advences. I think the early gnuchess versions aleready existed then, and all the essential algorithms were already developed. it would be interresting to see if the then software, compiled today and running on a temporary machine would be much weaker than its descendants.

yes Walter, I know. chess board is this way --->, computers board is that way. ---

by all means

I vehemently protest against the misuse of the term "rabbit", members of a courageous race who regularly have to withstand the onslaught of raving turtles !!!

after a couple of wins I'm sure the game evens itself out :)

yes, but this count includes the rubbish from the IHateDano - IHateGothicInventor period. maybe a cleanup is called for? it's been done on the other boards

interresting situations, the two sections are not in the same state:
in section 6, only a miracle (or a massive australian network breakdown... ) can prevent black from winning; but miracles are not uncommon... and the outcome of this game can modify the standing in this section.

in section 7 the situuation is different. one player has a significant advantage, but the game can still take a LONG time to finish. however, the outcome will have no impact on the section. in that case fencer can be asked to declare a winner to the section, and advance the tournament to round 2.

not good, think of the abbreviations for notation. how about Erzbischof?

That is one of the reasons I find gothic weird. There is no "long diagonal", or if you want, for each side there are 3: for white it's a1-h8 to c1-j8. In chess, the point of the fianchetto is defensive as well as offensive, as in the sicilian opening. In gothic, you are on an offensive "long diagonal" as soon as you open the d pawn.

I'd say yes
according to the last rumors, the USCF is on the fast road to commit suicide :(

sure
upgrade to rook. it's currently only 28$, slightly more than half the price this tournament originally asked for as entrance fee