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AbigailII: I think SKA's main point is that "This is mainly a 'lucky or unlucky' type of game."
and I take "I think one kind of strategy is to kill your player's king fast enough to win. There are so many ways to win and yet die" as simply a way to express the lack of clear strategy when there's a tornado touching down at random on the board. All in all it's offering the opinion that your question probably has no satisfactory answer.
For me the best strategy to "win" this game would be to spend the time on a different game instead! ;-)
SKA: I think one kind of strategy is to kill your player's king fast enough to win.
Right, as opposed as the strategy of say, Logic, where the strategy is not to be fast enough to win. Sorry, but "achieve the goal of the game fast enough to win" isn't strategy - that's what the game is about.
As whether or not Behemoth has a mate, that depends on your definition of mate. If you define mate as "a situation where the player is in check, and the player does not have a move to get out of check", then, sure, Behemoth does have a mate. I don't really know how else to define mate.
Could you care to elaborate on the There are so many ways to win? Person mention a handful?
There's no real mate in Behemoth. Yes, players can put them self in mate but cannot be in checkmated. I think one kind of strategy is to kill your player's king fast enough to win. There are so many ways to win and yet die also. This is mainly a 'lucky or unlucky' type of game.
How many games have ended in a real mate? I won a few games where my opponent left his/her king in a 'check', but most games have been ended by the behemoth snatching a king.
In this game, after 30...,Kxh6, the white player losed his king but the game didn´t finish in this moment because the Behemoth played to h8 from h7. In case of playing to h6 capturing the black king, the game had would be a draw. It´s not clear in the rules if this possibility is correct. If the king is captured before of the movement of the Behemoth, could the Behemoth move too?, could it capture to the other king?
AbigailII: after the third move, you usually have the pieces out and developed like the queen and much more mobile. You are capable of more startegy at that point.
danheg: If a player guesses the opponents code on his first move, how did he use his mind to figure it out?
As for the luck factor in Behemoth Chess, the luck factor is quite high. Higher than in any other game on Brainking. But the luck factor isn't any less on the third move than it is on the second move. Yet BKR is awarded if luck decides to kill your king on the third move, but not if luck decides to kill your king on the second move.
IMO, that doesn't make any sense. Either one takes the stance that luck plays a too high factor and doesn't award any BKR on Behemoth Chess - or accepts the fact there are games with a high luck factor and awards BKR for games that have a regular finish before the end of move 2.
AbigailII: But in Logic, it is a person using their mind to figure it out. The player has control. In Behemoth chess, the player does not have that control.
coan.net: I disagree. Behemoth Chess is a quick game, and it can be over in a few moves. It's kind of silly to not count it if the game doesn't reach an arbitrary number of move. Even if that number is two.
And it's not just Behemoth Chess. One might get lucky in Logic as well, and guess the code in the first or second move. Should one denied a BKR change because of it?
coan.net: as in any game where skill and chance are mixed, your stats and BKR has only meaning when a large number of games are played. you'll never have 99-1 results in backgammon, for example. if you have 60-40 it is already very significant.
grenv: Oh - I was just saying that was my opinion - how it is done is up to Fencer or whoever - I was just giving my own opinion that I would rather play a game to win/lose rating points - not just show up to win/lose them. Again, just my opinion - not complaining or anything.
AbigailII: After thinking about it for about 60 seconds, my opinion is that I like the fact that it would not count towards the BKR rating. Yea it's a lose, but it seems kind of silly to lose ratings (or gain ratings) when you don't even get a chance to play. At least that is my opinion.
In Behemoth Chess, it's entire possible to win the game in the first move (I did so in my second game). No other game on Brainking can be won without a timeout or resignment on the first game. However, that also means the game isn't counted for ones BKR. Probably because the game finishes before the third move.
Is this intended? Or just a side-effect of how current implementation?
"Le" Club has the only active Recycle Chess team in a fellowship.
.
If you belong in a fellowship, I would sure appreciate it if you could get a Recycle Chess team going so that we can have another team to play........... :)
nabla: It looks to me as though nothing short of K+Q vs K would be sufficient to force mate in the Compromise variant; K+N+B, K+B+B, even K+R (surprisingly?) can't get the job done.
K+P vs K endings are different, too. The "winning" side needs to have at least 2 pawns (and those must be on different files) to force a win.
Sorry to get so deep into the weeds here, but I find this stuff fascinating. :)
wetware: As for (1), what I read in the Encyclopedia of Chess Variants is that Fred Galvin issued two games in 1958, Refusal Chess and Compromise Chess. Compromise Chess is played with the rules you stated, and Refusal Chess is designed as the over-the-board version, where you have to play one of your two moves over the board, and the opponent can reject it if he wants. It is virtually the same game, but for a reason I don't know in Refusal Chess Galvin decided for the take-the-king version.
Now, I am not saying that one rule is better than the other. I generally prefer take-the-king rules, but in this case it is not a real take-the-king rule, because if it was, the mated opponent could refuse the move which takes the king, so a double check would be needed to win the game (duh!). Regarding endgames, I don't think that it should not make a big difference (but I share your bias!)
mangue : Where did you read that ? That must be a typo :-)
nabla: For Compromise Chess, I had never heard of your "forced move ends the game" rule option, until you mentioned it. I would still prefer the "forced moves must be played without compromise" option, for two reasons: (1) it was what the game's inventor specified, and (2) my admitted personal bias in favor of endgames, and the way endgame theory changes in specific variants. I'm afraid that in the "forced move ends the game" version of Compromise, very few endgames would ever be reached--we would virtually lose an entire phase of the game, for no good reason that I am able to see.
wetware: I agree that Compromise Chess is a should-be-here variant, but there are at least two possible checkmate rules and II am not sure which one is better. Although your ruleset makes perfect sense, the take-the-king variant also does, that is, if you have only one way to get out of check, you have lost the game. When you are not in check and have only one legal move, it should probably be counted as stalemate.
Move-and-a-half chess is an interesting idea, that I didn't hear about before. Probably only play-testing can tell whether games will not always be n times a single move, followed by a big series which leads to checkmate.
mangue : Yes, I would love to see multi-move variants here. They are well suited for turn-based play because the games are usually short. Marseillais is good, but my personal preference goes to Double-Move Chess (the take-the-king equivalent).
mangue: Move-and-a-Half Chess sounds very promising to me. I'd love to playtest it first, to see whether the bonus values that I mentioned give a good balance between White and Black wins. If it generates good complex play and yields about 50/50 results, I could see asking for it to be supported here. It reminds me of Three Checks Chess, with its wonderful imbalances between force+development vs. the number of checks delivered. Plus it could have some great mating threats and sequences like those seen in Progressive Chess.
compromising looks similar to ambigous, but closer to chess.
I am more seduced by one-and-half, maybe we could add that black start with +0.5 for compensation. What do you think? And of course if it is implemented, it must be implemented as a fully playable version with move sequences (as we have move sequences for backgammon, too)
I'm interested in playing/testing a couple of variants that aren't available at BK: Compromise Chess and Move-and-a-Half Chess.
We could play Compromise Chess here by means of unrated games of standard Chess, coupled with the use of BK messages for "compromising". Checks and piece movement are as in normal chess, except that: --Whenever only one legal move is possible, it is to be made without any "compromising" --Otherwise, the player to move must propose two legal candidate moves; the opponent then chooses which of these two moves shall actually be played --A pawn possibly promoting to a different piece should be considered a different move candidate (for example, in a position where e7-e8 is legal, e8=Q and e8=R could be put forward as a legal pair of candidate moves) --Win by making a move that produces a standard chess mating position, or by proposing a pair of legal moves--both of which are standard mates.
Move-and-a-Half Chess would have to be played via BK messages or email, as no variant here would allow us to mimic move sequences. (A computer-supported version of this variant would be ideal, because of the additional move accounting requirements.)
Move-and-a-Half Chess [rules and remarks from The Chess Variant Pages] --Each turn, each player gets enough gas to make 1.5 moves. --Each turn, each player must make at least one move. --If you only make one move, you get credit for half a move. --Each turn, each player may make as many moves as he can afford. --Check must be respected, and your first move of a turn must get you out of check. --The very first turn of the game, White gets only enough gas for one move. --[not stated on the Pages, but I presume that if a player makes a sequence of moves, only the last of them can be a checking move, as in rules for progressive chess variants]
Remarks on Move-and-a-Half Chess --This could be the best game of all. [the author may only have been speaking about Doublemove variants--wetware] --The primary strategic tension here is between saving and spending. If you save up enough gas to make ten moves in one turn, surely you can checkmate; but in the meantime, your opponent might be able to win by making a few extra moves here, a few there. --How embarassing it would be to get checkmated with 8 moves in the bank! --I think that the average game will be 20 moves or fewer.
If we play Move-and-a-Half Chess, I'd suggest mentioning your accumulated move total with every move (sequence) made.
I'd be happy to play 4-6 games with both of these variants, at any one time. And 3-5 days per move max, please.
Message me if you're interested. I've played Compromise Chess, but never heard of Move-and-a-Half Chess until today.
I like Recycle Chess. If you do, then join a team in your fellowship, or even better, take on a captainship of a Recycle Chess team. "Le" Club would like to challenge any team in this varient, but there is no one to challenge!
mezzanine: Certainly, piece values in Ice Age Chess are completely different from that in chess. Pawns and knights are considerably more valuable. Rooks and bishops are about the same value.
Note that to achieve the above position I saced Q for N.
Conclusion: In Ice-Age chess advanced pawn's and knight's are of more value than bishops, and when close to an Ice-Age even of more value than rook's and queen's. ;)
ScorpionOct64: Or, instead of a queen a Janus (or Arch Bishop) piece an instead of Rooks one extra Bishop and Knight. Also, why not having Knightmating Chess?
Modifisert av ScorpionOct64 (26. februar 2007, 08:01:00)
hi all...my son and I played chess today and tried different ideas..one was to remove the Queens and Rooks I found it interesting and harder to play I wonder if such a game was on BK we could get more Knight & Bishop practice...id like your ideas on that ty
Modifisert av Walter Montego (20. februar 2007, 02:46:41)
KotDB: In Shogi the promoted pieces revert back to their unpromoted shelves when captured. While promoted they're marked with a circle around the unpromoted symbol. This is if you use the Roman letter marked pieces as I do to play. If you use the Kanji marked pieces they're red colored when promoted and the promoted piece has a different name. Either method would seem to work for this variant you're talking about, though just using a red dot on the promoted piece would seem like a real easy thing to do. Especially if the captured piece is going to revert back to a Pawn and the player might have a choice of captures to make.
As far as I'm concerned the interface issue is secondary. It should be very easy to create the necessary additional piece images (e.g. take the current images and add a little red dot or something). And even without the extra images, all the information would still be there in the game history; players would just have to be careful to pay attention in certain situations.
But the most important thing is to get the rules right. Now that we know what the correct rule is, the BK implementation should be corrected as soon as possible.
AbigailII: You have a point here. It would be preferrable to have marked promoted pieces, although without it the game would still be more playable than say, Cloning Backgammon without marked "race" checkers :-)
nabla: Perhaps you find it quite easy to remember, and it probably would if you are playing in real time, but I doubt I would be able to remember that when the game progesses with one move per week, and I play 10 games.
AbigailII, KotDB: OK, Robert Huber told me that they always played with promoted pieces reverting to pawns once they were taken. I hope that we will agree on this rule. It avoids the "queen factory" trick, but sets a little problem : in order for the interface to be completely "Brainking-compliant", all info should be displayed on the board, so that the promoted pieces should be somehow marked. Although it is almost always quite easy to remember what pieces were promoted.