nabla: Do you like math? Is your name chosen because of the nabla operator ?

I have noticed in 2 games of mine this morning, I am making moves I already had made. One was a double jump into the king row in checkers (hard to forget making such a move) and another a strong attack in a chess game. Was there a slight hiccough with the system at all?

Princess Alison: I think a Knight should be made a Bishop if they refer a Rook.

I am playing in a BrainKing tournament to win a free Rook membership for one year. The tournament is here:

http://brainking.com/en/Tournaments?tri=6089#3

I am about to win game #2 of the 3 wins match. I must prepare for game #3 as my opponent will be fighting hard. I have already dedicated hundreds of hours of my time to this match, so I cannot be distracted by questions such as those posed by Wizard II below.

Bry:

Pioneer54:

If you want to debate me, do it in private.

But for the record, I am not upset, I am elated. By breeching the contract, I will be entitled to sooo many goodies

First of all, if half of you had a sense of humor, you would have read some of my posts and realized my "Archmoderator" posts were a joke, with a hidden message in some of them.

Read one of my posts on General Chat recently, where I was rather cryptic. Then read the first letter of every sentence, and you have the message that is hidden

My second Archmoderator post contained this nugget to those who paid attention:

"He's a programmer, part yogi and part recluse, impressively liberated from our oppulent life style"

or...

Happy April Fools

Filip changed what was already agreed upon. It was fine the way it was. It is not a matter of my feelings of happiness, which has nothing to do with it. He removed my name, removed the patent number, impugned the game by calling it a variant of Capablanca's (amazing how Capa is never considered a variant of Bird from 1874, nor Bird a variant of Carrera from 1617, isn't it?)

All I did was ask the question: Why?

His response was basically: Because.

This would never be an acceptable response to a request for an explanation of a change of status quo regarding anything of significance.

I took the discussion public only when 3 personal messages, one each day for 3 days, were totally ignored.

I took it private again once Fencer responded publically.

The result indicates premeditation on his part.

Pioneer54:

Grand Chess is too unlike contemporary chess. The setup lacks symmetry, there is no castling, and the starting position is mildly chaotic.

The BrainKing community does not represent our target market, as we target consumers. We sold perhaps a couple dozen Gothic Chess sets on here, but over 63,000 worldwide since December 2000 (thanks mostly to large drop-ship orders to QVC and, oddly, correctional facilities in the United States.)

Each variant has their own lovers and haters, as was before Gothic, and will be after Gothic.

If you don't like it, don't play it, simple enough.

Just don't try to tell me it is not popular. I walked away from a $75/hour consulting job in the year 2000 because I was making more with Gothic Chess on the side.

Come to Bartell Hall in Kansas City next August. Watch over 4,000 high school kids play for the prize of having free college tuition for one year. The entrance fee is only $125.

Tell them how much you like Grand Chess, how much you dislike Gothic, and pay close attention to their reaction.

I, for one, am happy to see that "Nellaf" is finally gone from the Gothic Chess rating list So thanks for that.

There seems to have been a lot of "dead wood" on the lists, in some cases 40% - 50% of the players were pawns clinging to the posts. Has anyone else noticed that?

It was going on via PM, and Fencer was not answering me.

Thanks for butting in Clay, as usual.

Re-read the contract Filip. It uses the words "game description".

Gothic Chess is my intellectual property. I have your signature on a document stating that my name will appear with ALL descriptions of that intellectual property being represented on BrainKing.

At this link...

http://brainking.com/en/SelectGameType

I see:

Extinction Chess
Very original chess variation invented by R. Wayne Schmittberger.

Knight Relay Chess
Very interesting chess variant, invented by Mannis Charosh in 1972.

Grand Chess
Grand Chess (by Christian Freeling) is a chess variant played on 10x10 board.

...yet my name was removed from Gothic Chess.

Why is it no longer there?

Fencer: I swear I saw some oldies on that list when I first posted that message, but they are gone now!

Weren't inactive players suppose to drop off of the rating lists?

Every now and then someone on one of the boards has an issue with the backgammon dice. Usually the complaint is that someone who was losing rolled a highly improbable cascade of doubles and won at the very end of the game.

I am not a gammon player, but I have done some research on "randomness". It sounds odd to most people, but randomness is actually a subset of the domain of artificial intelligence and programming, and it is important to have certain processes simulate randomness.

For example, a chess program that uses a transposition table to store positions that are encountered frequently can actually stuff more positions into the same amount of RAM with a better random number generator used to stamp the tokens used as the masks. Better randomness in these "hash tables" can also allow for faster retrieval of the data in these RAM buffers.

Getting back to the dice...

I was doing some more research recently, and I also saw this is someone's profile here on BK:

not playing it for a while due to so many losses of people getting stupid double's at the end of the game and winning everything. My favorite game now is froglet and I'll try any other game but backgammon.

Using different ideas from a few papers I read, there is a way to make everyone on here happy, without having that long cascade of doubles, or other scenarios (maybe lots of 1-2 rolls in a row can also be bad.)

Arrange all of the dice like this:

1-1
1-2
1-3
...
6-4
6-5
6-6

Now
, take a poll among the gammon community. What should be the maximum number of rolls of any particular combination that should be tolerated consecutively?

Say, a 6-6 should not be rolled more than 3 times in a row by one player, but maybe a 3-3 or 4-4 can be rolled more often.

Poll the entire community for every roll.

Next, create millions of "tapes" of thousands of consecutive rolls where all of the consecutive criteria are not exceeded, yet all other dice rolls are, for all intents and purposes, purely random.

Every player at the start of every game gets one of these tapes. No two tapes are every re-used.

When you run low on tapes, crank out more.

I know players object to pre-rolled dice, but the good thing is, you won't ever have someone run 8 straight double 6's on you when you are ahead by a mile, nor will you get snagged with 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, when you are almost home.

And, unlike other pre-rolled dice websites, the tapes are destroyed after each use, and never re-used, so the overall result would be "truly random" but with those nasty rolls totally removed.

The site does seem pretty fast. I was just thinking about a move today and it showed up.

No, everyone has their own "blind spots" for certain words that we have, out of habit, never corrected ourselves. In my case, it is the word "every" which I am constantly spelling as "very" and "position" which I nearly always spell as "postion".

With you, I have seem "multiply" occur in many, many posts.

BIG BAD WOLF: You often say "mutiply" when you mean "mutiple".

Cranky Franky: I just wanted to clarify that in 1968 I think, the World Backgammon Champion, Luigi somebody, did lose to one of Dr. Hans Berliner's Backgammon programs.

I am fuzzy on the details but not the result.

Just as a side note to all, there is a great deal of published papers on randomness in the artificial intelligence community. Believe it or not, if a chess program is capable of generating "better randomness", they get better use out of their hash tables, which helps to reduce the size of the game tree searched, which can help it get to a deeper search depth in the same amount of time!

I experiemented with different random number generation routines, and, sure enough, in the grand scheme of things, some code produces "better randomness" than others.

But please take a look at the huge number of active gammon games shown on the statistics page. With so many games in play, the odds are, evenly unlikely rolls are going to happen.

As one Quantum Physicist said: "If you wait long enough, everything will happen."

ScarletRose: Hi Scarlet,

I did not know that person had posted, which is why I would like to say, thank you Fencer, for the HIDE option .

Daniel Snyder: Thank you for letting people know about GothicChessLive.com... I did not know they have boards for them until now

Your welcome. Hope to see you there.

My post is part of a mutual promotion pledge between Fencer and myself, as I have subsequently explained to you. In it, I disclosed that I told Filip I would promote BrainKing.com as much as possible, including:

1) A link from GothicChess.org
2) Paying him to host GothicChess.org
3) Putting a "full page" menion in Gothic Vortex (which you can see at http://www.GothicChess.org/vortex.zip and then look under the SPECIAL menu)
4) Mentioning BrainKing.com in any printed material or other advertising media as much as possible. Anyone who tunes in to Chess.FM every Thursday night knows how often Gothic Chess is mentioned by radio host and National Master Dan Heisman.

The agreement with Filip is INFORMAL in nature (as we could not possibly list EVERYTHING) but I agreed to promote his site "as much as possible" and in exchange, Filip would allow me to promote Gothic Chess here.

Announcing a new feature on our GothicChessLive.com website is clearly within the bounds of our mutual-promotion structure.

Even after you had been advised of this, you greeted my post on the disucssion board by banning me without so much as a personal message asking me not to post, nor any form of warning.

I would like to know why a post I made on the 10x8 discussion board, which mentioned http://www.GothicChessLive.com was deleted without wanring by Pedro Martinez.

This was on-topic, about a 10x8 variant, and relevant.

Thanks.

Filip is busy enough as it is, I am sure (Clay!) he does not do this to make himself feel appreciated. As a programmer, I can say with certainty that there are times when a seemingly insignificant change in one area has very unanticipated results in another area. About 80% of the time, the programmer "is certain" that what is being demonstrated "is impossible" based on the small coding change.

It takes patience and a great deal of detective work to uncover such bugs. In most cases, the actually item "being whacked" is just something that had an overlooked dependency.

As code, structure, and releationships get more complex, being able to handle every possible permutation that comes up becomes an impossible task.

I think we should spare the jest at Filip's expense and just let him resolve the issues at hand. It is hard enough to fix stuff like this without feeling 30,000 eyes are upon you.

I must say, while "Taxation without Representation" was horrible, taxation with representation really stinks too

You mean the country that inspired one of the greatest revolts in contemporary history?

An opponent of mine has -16 hours shpwing for their time to move. Is there some sort of bug happening?

Some people in General Chat are reporting something similar with messages.

I have seen that behavior myself. Perhaps this should be a "server news" announcement if others are equally as puzzled.

I would suggest sending a message to either Harley or BigBadWolf. [edited]and I are Archenemies, so you will have to take a number

Well, for those who do have grievances, there is always...

http://brainking.com/game/ShowFellowship?fid=371

The former moderator is the one who penned "The Manifesto". I just summarized.

Pedro Martinez posted "Trice you are such a jerk" to the Gothic Chess board.

This was unprovoked. I said nothing to him, about him, made no comment in any way, and that was his response, for whatever reason.

I petitioned the former moderator to remove the post.

No response in 12, 24, 36, 48 hours...

I petitioned the former co-moderator.

He said "no" (basically) and the former moderator replied to the DB, so he left the comment up there as well.

I petitioned the Global Mods, and the rest is known.

If Pedro's comment would have been deleted, I would have taken no such actions.

And Pedro's reward? He was made co-mod.

I don't understand the logic of that.

If I call him a jerk now, will I be made a co-mod too?

I think if vacations days are sold at about $5 per day, you might get some serious takers! Not a bad idea, really.

Oh, right, I was just in the finals of a tournament that was a 3-wins match.

But games are still counted, aren't they?

In all of my tournaments that had a finals sections, I have made it to the finals, that is a heck of a lot of uncounted games if this is the case!

I know I have played 22 games of Amazons, but my profile only shows 20. Can anyone determine where the other 2 games are?

Chessmaster1000:

My fourth question is:
I have around 300 completed Backgammon games and 100 Hyper-Backgammon.
When i win or lose against an equal opponent at Backgammon, i gain or lose 8 points ALWAYS! When i win or lose against an equal opponent at Hyper-Backgammon, i gain or lose 19-25 points.......
Why is that happening.............?

If the rating system is implemented the way Mark Glickman devised, there are 2 numbers used to compute your rating. One is your rating, the other is your rating deviation (or just r.d.)

The r.d. measures the accuracy of your rating. It uses the typical Gaussian type distribution associated with a 95% level of uncertainty based on what is known about your play, and the accuracy of your opponents' play.

The higher your r.d., the more your rating will tend to ocillate.

For example, at "game 0", your r.d. is set at 350. This means with a 95% level of certainty, your rating is the starting rating (1500?) + or - 350 points.

Whether you win or lose, your r.d. goes down a bunch, I think to about 220. That means your next rating is +- 220 from your "true" rating with, again, a 95% level of certainty.

As time goes on, your r.d. goes down to about 30, then it hardly ever goes below that.

With your game counts, it is safe to say your r.d. for 300+ games is much lower than for 100+ games.

Also, your r.d. starts to RISE again as you do not play for a while. It is a time-based anti-decay function.

Now, after having said all of that, I hope that is why you are observing what you are observing!

Never a problem on my Macintosh G4 Cube.

Czuch, are you saying that the issue is primarily that a "server news" module was spawned touting the contributions of the sponsors?

If so, in the grand scheme of things, I don't think it matters.

Other people have held tournaments where something was offered, by default, to the exclusion of everyone other than the participants.

Since the tournament creators make the rules, and offer the incentives for playing, the rest of the site should most likely just accept the conditions.

As far as I can see, it is not a "language" issue, it is not a prize offering issue, and you are just upset that it made it under the guise of "server news" in the English language.

I don't think the subsequent commotion was worth it after you have pointed out what we already were well aware of... so how about wave a truce flag, smoke a peace pipe, and let it go?

I have held Gothic Chess tournaments with prize money. Does that mean I "excluded" Backgammon players or players who could not read the English description and understand there was money at stake?

I think anyone who holds a tournament with a prize should be able to specify it however they want.

Aboiut Sumerian and programs, I am fairly certain that I announced programmers from the Gothic Chess Computer World Championship were all invited to participate.

I don't see the logic in the posts that say "once one engine is allowed, all must be allowed." This was a special tournament. I believe disallowing engines by default, unless so specified by the tournament director, is a good policy.

Suppose players have a collection of chess engines and they want to see how they perform against one another?

Why not have an unrated tournament where all of the engines can bash it out?

That might be something of interest to the whole community.

I will try and find my post(s) about inviting the computers in the event.

Andersp: Can't we have exceptions on a tournament by tournament basis? Everyone knows of the experimental S.M.I.R.F. program, and Reinhardt is just trying to improve it by testing it on others.

It's not like he is being subterranean with his intentions.

Well, before I posted, everyone was allowed to debate that topic here. The list of commenters included Sumerian, Caissus, CzuchCheckers, RedSales, BBW, Hrqls, ScarletRose, and the list goes on.

As soon as I post, it is "off topic" according to Stevie.

Can someone please explain this?

Take a look at this game, between ChessCarpenter and myself, played on the CowPlay.com website at the end of 2004:

http://www.gothicchess.org/gotm_2004_10/game.htm

Now fast forward to my 14th move as black.

14...h5 looks to be an error as it lets my knight
be taken. It looks like I gave up my knight for "no reason".

This was a strategic trap to bait the white
archbishop to attack in a sector of the board where it would soon be out of play and useless.

While still down material, I was able to open up the center and get his king in trouble. No matter how he decided to deal with my advanced pawn, taking it would spell disaster, and not taking it only delayed the invevitable.

This type of "look ahead thinking" is far beyond the search horizon of a computer. In fact, if you replay some of ChessCarpenter's moves as white, Gothic Vortex will make similar moves, taking the material (my knight) without understanding the "big picture".

Vortex thought white was winning from move 14 onward, and I would play that position against any program on the planet and be able to win it.

Again, I mention this because some people's posts on here seem to think I use Gothic Vortex when I play on here. Nothing is farther from the truth.

At fast time controls, like game in 10 mins or faster, Vortex kills me. At time controls slower than game in 2 hours, there is no program that can win against ANY strong willed player of skill.

This has been well documented in the chess playing community for decades. Strong correspondence players still outperform computers.

I have read quite a few posts about Sumerian, the S.M.I.R.F. program, the topic of the prize money, and the numerous comments about "cheating".

First, I am happy to pay Reinhard the $25 for winning his section. If you divide this by all of the hours he has put into his program, this is really pennies per hour.

Second, I get the sense that some people think programs are really invincible. This is clearly not the case, even if you let them think for days on end.

I have played a Janus game against Caissus where I had a mate in 27. It took me about 6 hours to go through it all and verify it before I sacrificed first my knight, then my janus (Archbishop).

I play on two boards. One has the current position, the other is how I analyze.

I play every move of every game down to the endgame before I make a move.

You get much more insight into the game that way than any computer program can provide.

Thetype of game does not matter: chess, checkers, Gothic Chess. A good player with the proper motivation using this technique will never be defeated by a computer, and he can also beat a computer in this fashion.

In my Gothic Chess game against WhiteShark, I was able to announce mate in 31. It required sacrificing a Chancellor for an Archbishop, then losing a Knight for just a pawn very early in the game!


I could let Gothic Vortex search for 6 months and it would not make these moves.

Just something to consider.

bwildman said: "I wonder if he's waving hello or goodbye?"

Today I built a spreadsheet to solve this. Let me know if you want the answer.

mrloupcity:

That was not the purpose of the intellectual property rights that most game manufactures apply for. Sure, we see Battleship as a great game that has had millions of sales, but what was the demand for this game before it was introduced?

The idea behind patents and copyrights is to protect the product through its initial stages of growth. Once it has become 'branded' because it is so popular, then the law is relaxed a bit.

The beauty of this approach is easy to appreciate. If I a product is successful, then it "gets so big" that once the patent expires, the main company will not be hurt by imitations and copies.

If the company was not successful, very few, if any, will follow in their footsteps.

Intellectual property rights are similar to "staking your claim" when you found gold in 1849. You register the area of land you are mining, pay some nomial fee per square foot, you demonstrate the chunk of land is not so big that you can't handle it, then you can mine at your leisure and not have to worry about someone removing ore from your site.